Posted by Dean on September 08, 2018 at 20:10:40 from (68.50.160.151):
Folks, I'm, on a private road with only 4 residences. About two hours ago I heard an explosion and the power went out.
I have a Kohler 20KW whole house back up generator, which came on within a few seconds and has been running ever since. I'm the only party on my short branch line with power.
I knew that the 80 A fuse on the 7,200 V line on my road had blown because I knew where it was and I could see that other houses nearby not serviced by my line had power. Once my genset had restored power and my battery backed up Comcast router had had come back up (don't ask) so that I once again had internet and phone, I called in the outage, speaking only to a computer. Turns out I was the first to call it in.
It also turns out that my new neighbor down the road about 1/4 mile has a close friend that works for Duke Energy and, coincidently, his friend was working today (I did not know this.). New neighbor called him directly (It's great to have connections.) and a Duke truck showed up about 30 minutes later.
Since I've been here since 1952, heard the explosion, and knew that the blown fuse was on the big 60' pole line on my property about 600' from my house, carrying a 34 KV 3 phase line as well as the 7,200 V line for local service, I stopped the Duke truck when it went by to offer my assistance. He was a nice guy, told me that he well knew my new neighbor who had called him and expected to find a downed tree on the line back the dead end road, which would need to be cleared before replacing the fuse. Great. Things should be back up within a few minutes.
It's now dark and I watched the lights of the truck as he inspected for the fault. I again stopped to speak to the Duke guy when he drove back out (I'm the first farm on the road.). Bad news. He could find no visible fault. Moreover, not only had the fuse blown but the fault had also burned out the lead wire to the fuse holder. Of course the fault must be found and cleared before replacing the fuse and lead in or it will just blow again.
More bad news. It's dark, raining cats and dogs, and not possible to get a bucket truck to the pole where the fuse is so it must be climbed to make repairs. Of course this requires more than one man, even in daylight, so help will be required.
Even more bad news. Due to severe thunderstorms in the entire region, there are multiple outages. My outage affects only 4 customers. Worse yet, according to the Duke Energy website, only 2 customers are affected. Bottom line, my outage is at the bottom of the priority list. Accordingly, the Duke serviceman, called directly by my new neighbor, was called away to attend to outages of higher priority. Duke website now updated to "assessing damage, restoration pending."
It's nice to have a back up generator. Without one, I would not be posting this. Who knows when power will be restored.
Folks, I will likely turn in within the hour. Before I do, I will shut down the genset. Why let it run indefinitely when I am sleeping and do not need it? If power is restored during the night, my old digital clock radio will chirp, waking me, and I can reset all of my old digital clocks and restore the genset to auto. If power is still out when I awake, I will restore the genset to auto to restore power. Things in the refrigerator and freezer will be fine until morning.
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