Posted on 09/06/2020 10:35:41 PM PDT by grey_whiskers
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(Excerpt) Read more at mighty990.com ...
Had that happen at the University of Missouri power plant when I was there, around 1970. Wow, lit up the whole district in the bluish light, fizzing and crackling for what seemed like hours. Pretty scary stuff.
+1 !
Georgia Power says that is a transformer fire. Right.
Just guessing, this was probably about a 1500MW generating plant. The electrical grid is designed such that a capacity of this size can trip offline with little to no impact on consumers. This is by temporarily increasing the output by online generating and bringing idling capacity back up to capacity. At least it works like this unless you’re in California.
I had a ringside seat to watching a natural gas power plant burn once. An electrical short in the output wiring caught insulation on fire then the fire spread through the cable trays. From start to fully blazing the whole unit was probably 15 minutes.
I was in a shelter place location that was a quarter mile away and had a clear view of the fire and the rest of the facility. My location was isolated from the main facility and our 2 evacuation routes were either close to the fire or into clouds of chemical release. Chemical units were tripping into emergency shutdown all over the place because of a loss of steam, not electricity.
The electrical load was virtually instantly absorbed by the Texas grid. Steam could not be replaced as quickly. A 1940s era power plant at the facility was mothballed 10 years previously when it was replaced by a cogeneration power plant. This legacy unit was dusted off and restarted. Within about 12 hours it was producing steam and zero electricity in order to supply steam into the facility’s utility lines. As the steam availability increased, chemical operating units sequentially restarted over 48 hours.
Some really big transformers. Power plant energy scale is unimaginable to those outside of the business.
Good description.
What do you mean trash panda?
Trash Panda is a nickname given to Raccoons...
Hot, transformer oil is an explosion waiting to happen.
Transformers are normally operated hot because of magnetic heating, and there are protective devices connected to circuit breakers to take them out of service should they dangerously overheat. It the protective devices fail to operate during abnormal conditions, you get an explosion. Utility workers do not want to be nearby when the hot, fiery transformer goes flying. Far worse than SHTF, IMHO.
What’s the nickname for squirrels and possums??
southern chili ...
tree rats for squirrels, armadillos are possum on the half shell.
Oh and possums are also george jones impersonator.
Raccoon.
Trash panda.
Oh! I see! That is a perfect description!
Funny part is, pandas aren’t bears.
They’re oversized tailless raccoons.
That eat oversized attitudinal grass.
The world is a truly strange place.
As for the incandescent raccoon nack in the 80’s, the service crew only found a partly scorched tail.
They said the rest vaporized, didn’t even chunkify or explode.
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