Monday, August 17, 2009

Moores Mill Road Follow-up

On Friday I promised an explanation for the strange behavior of the power lines on Moores Mill Rd. Basically what happened was a malfunction at a transformer substation that is in charge of stepping down the voltage from 34 kV to 14 or 7 kV. The smaller transformers that are hooked onto the telephone poles then perform the subsequent voltage drops before the electricity makes it to homes, where it is finally stepped down to 120/240 V. So rather than delivering electricity at 7 kV (around that) to the transformers, they were getting inputs at 34 kV, the highest voltage considered to be distribution-grade electricity (above that is transmission). One by one the transformers were overloading and exploding (partially due to the insulating oil that is used inside them), and then the electricity would reach the next transformer in sequence.

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