I shared the picture with my nephew the electrician. Yeah, he said, I’ve seen a transformer ground rod connection that was boiling a puddle. That, is scary.
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More like you push it to turn *yourself* off…
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I heard of a variation of this, in a data center in the 1970s. There was a row of disk drives — the old kind that’s the size of a dish washer. Powered with 3 phase power, and with the chassis all bonded together by nice fat ground straps.
One of those ground straps melted.
It turned out the building was fed from two power feeds, at opposite sides of the building, with the grounds not bonded together as required. And because of unbalanced phases the neutrals, and hence the grounds, were not at the same potential.
The particular data center room got power from both feeds, and someone had hooked half the disk drives to one and half to the other. So the ground strap in question was carrying the short circuit current between those two, different, grounds. The story doesn’t report whether the equipment survived the abuse.
Oh yes, location… this was in Marlborough, MA.
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It means cut the main feed, go outside and have a ciggy (real tobacco, not weed), and call in someone who knows what to do. Oh, and it would be a good idea to put a very nice gift in the offering plate on the Sabbath.
Wow
I shared the picture with my nephew the electrician. Yeah, he said, I’ve seen a transformer ground rod connection that was boiling a puddle. That, is scary.
More like you push it to turn *yourself* off…
I heard of a variation of this, in a data center in the 1970s. There was a row of disk drives — the old kind that’s the size of a dish washer. Powered with 3 phase power, and with the chassis all bonded together by nice fat ground straps.
One of those ground straps melted.
It turned out the building was fed from two power feeds, at opposite sides of the building, with the grounds not bonded together as required. And because of unbalanced phases the neutrals, and hence the grounds, were not at the same potential.
The particular data center room got power from both feeds, and someone had hooked half the disk drives to one and half to the other. So the ground strap in question was carrying the short circuit current between those two, different, grounds. The story doesn’t report whether the equipment survived the abuse.
Oh yes, location… this was in Marlborough, MA.
It means cut the main feed, go outside and have a ciggy (real tobacco, not weed), and call in someone who knows what to do. Oh, and it would be a good idea to put a very nice gift in the offering plate on the Sabbath.