Strange Power Surge

[IluvABbeef]

Knocked out the power to the house for a few hours. And everything went off with a BANG, but lucky nothing got fried, except for the digital stove clock. Scared the crap out of Mom (I was away working when it happened). Down the line though, at my uncle's place, the laptop got damaged pretty good, so did the satellite, or the connection from the TV to the satellite, and probably a few other things. Power went off with a bang there too, and further yet was my grandpa's old place, dunno how things faired there. The power company was down at the store corner, a couple miles west where we live, fixing something there (at least, that's what it seemed), and Mom phoned in to get a report on what caused the unknown surge (no lightning storms around to speak of). Hopefully the power company lets us know what made the power go off like that, we'd sure like to know (by we I mean everyone affected).

 

[Alice]

Karin, when did this happen?

Alice

 

[IluvABbeef]

A few days ago.

 

[Alice]

Karin,

My daughter was shopping near the metroplex on Friday when the mall she was shopping in was evacuated because of some sort of strange power surge/outage/somethin'. She said there was foam spread on the parking lot and fire trucks came on the scene, yet there was no fire. What I found odd was that here at the farm we had a power surge around the same time and that's about 75 miles from here.

Weird!!!!

Alice

 

[Mahoney Pursley Ranch]

It's those Aliens yall had there awhile back. :lol2:

 

[john250]

It's those Aliens yall had there awhile back. :lol2:

They are tapping the high voltage lines. I heard it on talk radio.

 

[Alice]

It's those Aliens yall had there awhile back. :lol2:

You dam skippy! Glad someone from these parts is finally accepting it! :shock: :lol: :lol:

Alice

 

[Alice]

It's those Aliens yall had there awhile back. :lol2:

They are tapping the high voltage lines. I heard it on talk radio.

If ya' heard it on talk radio, it must be so!

Alice

 

[peg4x4]

Sun Spots!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[milesvb]

Sun Spots!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't be silly. It was caused by global warming.

 

[IluvABbeef]

It's sure always handy to have folks seeing the lighter side of things. :lol:

Whatever it was caused by, it sure was weird... :?

 

[flaboy]

Lightning struck a pine tree about 30 feet from the house a week or so ago. Took out all the phones, water softener, blew a fence charger off a post, and did some other stuff. I was home and now I will have to take down two more trees.

 

[Earl Thigpen]

Knocked out the power to the house for a few hours. And everything went off with a BANG, but lucky nothing got fried, except for the digital stove clock. Scared the crap out of Mom (I was away working when it happened). Down the line though, at my uncle's place, the laptop got damaged pretty good, so did the satellite, or the connection from the TV to the satellite, and probably a few other things. Power went off with a bang there too, and further yet was my grandpa's old place, dunno how things faired there. The power company was down at the store corner, a couple miles west where we live, fixing something there (at least, that's what it seemed), and Mom phoned in to get a report on what caused the unknown surge (no lightning storms around to speak of). Hopefully the power company lets us know what made the power go off like that, we'd sure like to know (by we I mean everyone affected).

If there was no lightning then it was probably a shorted transformer. Power, when it comes out of the power plant runs upwards of 400,000 volts. It gets stepped down as it gets distributed to the point where rural lines are somewhere around 12,000 volts. It then gets stepped down to 220 volts for home use.

Somewhere up the line a transformer, the thing that does the conversion, may have shorted primary to secondary which would have placed a heII of a spike on the power lines down stream. So your home 220 may have gone to a couple of thousand for a very short period of time. Enough time though to have blown up some of your appliances. There would have been a lot of noise close to the transformer that shorted (explosion), fire more than likely and a lot of pi$$ed off power people because in most cases they are liable for damage downstream. You need to check with the power folks and file a claim for damages if necessary. They may lie so be prepared.

 

[IluvABbeef]

The power company phoned back and said it may have been caused by lightning, but there were no storms around. But when you think about it, lightning can strike when there doesn't need to be a storm around, they can strike a fair distance. There's also a guy that has a mechanics/welding shop too, so that might've got something to do with it. Hard to say though.

 

[flaboy]

I had another strike last Sunday. Hit another pine tree just east of my house. Now I have three trees to take down. Maybe I should stay inside. :idea:

 

[dyates]

Maybe some redneck got electrocuted while stealing copper. They're hitting the substations, cell phone towers, you name it here. They're usually smart enough to hit the ground rods and wires, but some are not so smart.