Zappity Zap

[WRT]

Looks pretty cool, not that these plebs would know, hard to see whats happening while you are cowering behind the front of your truck. Shoulda parked further back, methinks - shame it didnt hit the truck, that woulda looked even cooler.

Impressive stuff tho . . .

[Eurodave]

Woah!! Dude!! WTF was that? explain....

[Lias]

I'd love to have someone explain that but even so its still cool as fuck looking.

[WRT]

Dont really know much about it, but apparently its a 500,000v circuit breaker?

[ManDownUnder]

Looks pretty cool, not that these plebs would know, hard to see whats happening while you are cowering behind the front of your truck. Shoulda parked further back, methinks - shame it didnt hit the truck, that woulda looked even cooler.

Impressive stuff tho . . .

Yeah. I saw what happens when someone gets caught too close to 240kV (the NZ equivalent of the high voltage lines) and he went through plastic surgery hell for years...

The arcs look cool though - love the way they take on a life of their own twirling and dancing like that.

[ManDownUnder]

Dont really know much about it, but apparently its a 500,000v circuit breaker?

Sounds right. Not sure of the voltages but I know the long distance lines are higher voltage than the NZ ones. Some operate at 750kV I think.

I'd love to have someone explain that but even so its still cool as fuck looking.

The arc gets struck and ionises the air - making it more conductive and as the ionised air heats it rises carrying the arc with it, as far as the voltage will allow the arc to be maintained.

Same principle and stick welding. You need to "strike the arc" (really close) but then you can draw the arc back once everything's burning.

Looks cool - you should see it at night

[bugjuice]

yeah, seen that a few times before.
bloody impressive, and just as s/he zooms out, you see the people and truck, really gives you a sense of the scale of it.

It was explained to me before about what and why it happened, but can't remember word for word. Basically, it's pumping heaps of voltage. Static in the air could have been higher than normal, and it was just fusing the static in order for it to jump from one pole to the other.

The poles moving happen all the time, and most parts of the world. They're probably here somewhere. It's to switch between loads and demands and circuits

[ManDownUnder]

The poles moving happen all the time, and most parts of the world. They're probably here somewhere. It's to switch between loads and demands and circuits

The poles moving you mention are "circuit breakers" (aka a bloody big switch). They're in place at every power station in the country.

The best ones are the "air breakers" which shoot a blast of air through the gap when the switch first opens, blowing out the arc and stopping this from happening. When the air breakers go off they literally sound like a cannon shot, and can be heard 5km away on a good day.

I used to work at a power station in Taranaki and we'd have loads of visitors come through. The worker bees at the station could tell when the breakers were about to go off because we could hear the generating units winding down. One of the guys was notorious for picking up on it and leading the visitors over toward the switchyard (where the breakers live) and explain the voltages, and if anything went wrong there'd be death, mayhem and...

**BOOM**

One time this kid just ran - simply ran, up a ladder (2 floors) opened the door and went inside - straight into one of the generating units (it was safe enough but set off every alarm in the control room...)

Lots of fun

[limbimtimwim]

Impressive stuff tho . . .

"HRC's latest ignition kit"

:-)

[sAsLEX]

I used to work at a power station in Taranaki and we'd have loads of visitors come through.

Lots of fun

What station? dad still works at NP and knows most of the people in the industry


is the jacobs ladders that sparks a cool arc that rises slowly then re arcs at the bottom?

[Sniper]

That was pretty cool. Playing with fire has nothing on playing with electricity now......

[ManDownUnder]

What station? dad still works at NP and knows most of the people in the industry


is the jacobs ladders that sparks a cool arc that rises slowly then re arcs at the bottom?

Stratford, and my Father in law was an operator at NP for years.

PM me with details of your old man

edit - yes the jacobs ladder is as you describe - complete with really cool crackling noise
MDU

[ManDownUnder]

That was pretty cool. Playing with fire has nothing on playing with electricity now......

Would rather play with fire.

Electricity has this bad habit of keeping you in the game - you can let go of fire when it starts to hurt

[Sniper]

Electricity has this bad habit of keeping you in the game - you can let go of fire when it starts to hurt

That just proves that electricity is a much more caring friend. It never wants to let you go

Bugger that though, I have electrocuted myself more times than I have had birthdays. Playing with fire is still better

PT

[Colapop]

It's a disconnector arrangement on a 500kV line. We're in the process of designing the 400kV ones for NZ. The line shown was deliberately overloaded to 'force test' the equipment (that's how they knew what and where to video). It was a test of the circuit breaker in Nevada. First the circuit breaker flashes over then the disconnector opens which extends the arc it would have gone on for ages but they opened a circuit breaker upstream from it.


And Sniper, electrickery is worse than fire - it cooks you from the inside.