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My Dad has a story on this one. He was a mechanical engineer in a Brisbane power station in the 50s/60s. In those days, generators had to be manually phase sy
by femto 14y ago
My Dad has a story on this one. He was a mechanical engineer in a Brisbane power station in the 50s/60s. In those days, generators had to be manually phase synchronised before being connected to the grid. You had to spin up the generator and vary its speed whilst monitoring the relative phase on a meter. Once the relative phase between the grid and generator was zero, it was safe to throw the switch to put the generator on-line. One day, someone threw the switch when the phase was 180 degrees...
The entire generator, including its concrete foundation, ripped itself out of the ground.
There was also the one about an electrician working on a generator who blasted himself with 66kV (low impedance). Massive burns, but he lived.
- femto 14y agoSince people liked that one, my Dad also had another good engineering disaster story, though this one is pressure related, not electricity related. He used to work for a company called James Hardie, that made asbestos cement sheeting. Part of the process involved baking the sheets in a huge autoclave, like the one pictured here [1] (note the size of the man). An autoclave is an oven, filled with high pressure steam. One day the door blew off the autoclave. The door disappeared, and the autoclave itself acted as a rocket, about the size of a shuttle solid fuel booster. It sheared off the bolts holding it to its foundation, rocketed though the back wall of the factory and ended up in a body of water about a mile away. [1] http://museumvictoria.com.au/collections/items/756810/glass-negative-vickers-ruwolt-pty-ltd-autoclave-for-james-hardie-1959 http://museumvictoria.com.au/collections/items/756810/glass-...
- finnw 14y agoI wonder if the steam rocket[1] was invented as a result of an incident like this? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_rocket http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_rocket