So what happened in Blackburn?

[mattylad]

I didnt catch it but does anyone know what exactly hapened to the electric in Blackburn?
news article I have seen piles of dvd players, sky boxes etc on the tv.

 

[ricicle]

Copper theft/faulty equipment/failed connection I would imagine causing neutral loss at the sub-station ?

 

[radioredcat]

They never mentioned what the fault was only a fault in a substation as it looks like they lost the neutral it's similar to the westhoughton incident (due to cable theft) a few years back.


Andy

 

[bhm1712]

if you read the article it says power surge - thats what exactly happened.

So something caused the voltage spike, increasec current flow, which in turn caused the voltage to exceed the breakdown voltage of electronic devices i.e sky boxes etc etc

 

[bhm1712]

its sounds like copper theft has struck again. idiots

 

[westie101]

Loss of LV neutral caused by a faulty transformer

 

[radioredcat]

Loss of LV neutral caused by a faulty transformer

The fact they not report cable theft lead me to believe it might just be a fault i hope it never happens here.

Andy

 

[bhm1712]

http://download.hager.com/hagergrou...ion/2007Catalogue/2007/3ProtectionDevices.pdf

Page 25

Buy one of those and it probably will never happen

 

[JohnW2]

One thing which rather surprises me is that the article itself (per OP link) seems to essentially 'major' on damaged boilers (70 are mentioned). If I had been asked to guess, I think I would have put boilers way down the list of things that I would have expected to be most susceptible to damage as a result of supply faults. Is this misleading reporting, or is there something about modern boilers which makes them particularly susceptible to such damage?

Kind Regards, John.

 

[bhm1712]

well they all have PCB's with sensative electronics on them...

 

[westie101]

The term surge is badly miss used in this situation, and the effect is not transitory! The excess voltages seen can be sustained for a considerable time and are dependent upon the load balance of the faulty system.

Most transient over voltage (surge) protection is just that, a sudden over voltage caused by for example a lightning strike.

 

[xr4x4]

well they all have PCB's with sensative electronics on them...

And what doesn't these days.. I think was his point.

 

[bhm1712]

well they all have PCB's with sensative electronics on them...

And what doesn't these days.. I think was his point.

I dont think it was his point, note how he doesnt mention anything else other than boilers, as if boilers are not the same as any other piece of kit... the articles i have found regarding this have said that everything from DVD players, sky boxes, fridges, freezers, ovens etc etc have all been damaged.

If his point was indeed that boilers are indeed no different than anything else, because everything has sensitive electronics, why would he then think that they are lower down on the list of things which were most likely to be damaged?

 

[JohnW2]

Buy one of those and it probably will never happen

Although these events are very rare, given some of the very unlikely eventualities we are expected to protect against these days, I'm a little surprised that we are not seeing over-voltage protection coming into fashion (or even 'required').

There is certainly growing interest in SPDs (such as you link to), as witness the whole new chapter in Amd 1 of BS7671:2008. However, whilst such devices do protect against transient 'surges' (serious examples of which are probably very rare), do they actually afford any protection against 'sustained moderate over-voltage' such as one would get with a lost neutral such as in this case? I suspect not - does anyyone know? If SPDs don't have such functionality, I would presume that it would be easy to design and manufacture "OVDs" which did operate on sustained overvoltage (or build such functionality into SPDs, or even RCDs).

Kind Regards, John.

 

[westie101]

In the majority of cases all that is actually damaged is part of the power supply of the equipment. There is a company goes round and usually repairs most of the stuff. Of course that takes time if a lot of houses are affected which in this "fix it now" world causes complaint.
Also if there is any suspicion of pre-PVC wiring we have to carry out an inspection of these properties.

Any we can't access are disconnected in the street