"Bruce L. Bergman" wrote:

On Tue, 14 Jun 2005 14:25:16 GMT, "Pete C."
wrote:
Harold and Susan Vordos wrote:

Chuckle! You, apparently, live in town. Not only could they not replace
one for me in 15 minutes, it's highly unlikely they could do so in a couple
hours. It would take no less than 45 minutes for someone to respond to
our remote address, then the time it would take to get a transformer on
location, assuming they had one in the yard.

That case was indeed in town and it was a planned replacement. However,
if you give them sufficient information when you log the trouble call I
see no reason they couldn't have the correct transformer with them when
they come out. Given the stock yards I've seen I think it's pretty
unlikely that they would not have a suitable replacement on hand. So 15
min to replace + travel time to get there.

So you're telling me they don't have a "hog wagon" or two parked at
the local utility yard, all ready to grab and go? Around here they
have several of them available in each area yard for most KVA sizes
and voltages.

(A trailer-mounted multi-tap transformer and a bunch of HV stranded
motor-lead cable set up to come out of a hole on the top, or a big
piece of liquidtight for armor to run into a pad-mount manhole. They
just park it next to the dead transformer, set the taps to the supply
and load voltages they need, run the cables down into the manhole or
up to the top of the pole, and jumper around the dead transformer.
Then you surround it with a jillion cones around the pole, or a
portable fence to keep kiddies out of the manhole.)


I've seen plenty of those trailer setups as well, some rather large and
"polished" looking with cooling fans and everything.

The scariest temp setup I ever saw was in Philly. I'm walking down a
nice tree lined street and see a few cones and a plywood box wall around
a spot along side the sidewalk. Getting closer I see that there is a
short run of the Yellow-jacket cable guard running between the plywood
wall and the nearest tree. When I got up to it and looked over the 4'
high plywood wall I saw a half excavated manhole with three HV "elbow"
connectors feeding three HV lines that went through the Yellow-jacket
and then exposed up the side of the tree. The lines continued along from
tree to tree, perhaps 8' up, tied in place with pieces of yellow poly
rope for what had to be at least 400' down the street before they
crossed over the street and continued down and alley as far as I could
see, tied off to fire escapes and whatever else was handy. I don't
recall a single high voltage warning sign anywhere. I wish I had a
camera with me.

Pete C.