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I feel the real danger of back feeding is not that american line workers can't be bothered to check if the line is truly dead before starting to work. It's that
by thmsths 1y ago
I feel the real danger of back feeding is not that american line workers can't be bothered to check if the line is truly dead before starting to work. It's that the line could be reenergized at any time.
- Symbiote 1y agoLineworkers will ground/earth the line with a very good connection (e.g. metal rod into the ground) before working on it, as far as I know. (At least, this is what electricians working with 33kV in industry in Europe do, e.g. if doing maintenance on a cable to a datacentre.)
- rtkwe 1y agoI haven't seen them doing that on power outage post storm line repairs near me, usually during those they're working as fast as possible because they have dozens of other spots they need to repair.
- BenjiWiebe 1y agoHopefully they're bonding the line to their bucket at least.
- rtkwe 1y agoProbably I've just not seen them ever drive in a ground rod while doing basic line repair work.
- wongarsu 1y agoAlso just the frequency with which work happens on the distribution grid. Most of Europe has almost all distribution lines underground (only running high-voltage transmission lines above ground), and unless somebody digs in the wrong spot they tend to just stay there. In the US meanwhile they are mostly above ground where they are susceptible to storms, falling trees, aluminum ladders and all kinds of other stuff that would cause a line worker to be called out
- nandomrumber 1y agoAutomatic transfer switches are a thing, but generally you want the supplies sync’ed. A manual break-before-make transfer switch will do the job. Not much help if you’re not home and the mains goes out and your food spoils, though fridges will stay cold for hours if left shut, and longer if there’s a lot of thermal mass in them - try to keep most of the empty space in your fridge and freezer filled with water bottles.