Power outage - Transmission Tower Down

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#3252526 24-Jun-2024 14:13

tweake: that will be a major concern now. we had attacks on cell towers before, including toppling them over.

seems unlikely that's going to happen also those people have trouble using a spanner imo. Weren't they trying to set fire to them or something?

Scott3

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#3252527 24-Jun-2024 14:13

gzt: "Too many nuts were removed" how many is too many?

There will be a procedure for work requiring nut removal, which will set out an engineered answer to this. (and likely a requirement to monitor winds so all nuts are installed for windstorms).

All we really need to know as the general public is that all them from 3/4 feet = too many removed.

tweake

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#3252532 24-Jun-2024 14:20

gzt:
tweake: that will be a major concern now. we had attacks on cell towers before, including toppling them over.

seems unlikely that's going to happen also those people have trouble using a spanner imo. Weren't they trying to set fire to them or something?

while some where set on fire, we had some that where toppled over. they went quite a way to get to it to, so fairly determined.

cyril7

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#3252555 24-Jun-2024 14:49

According to the news detail I saw, more than one bolt at a time requires an engineering review, so only one bolt at a time should be removed from the pylon (not each leg)

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Scott3

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#3252556 24-Jun-2024 14:50

gzt:
tweake: that will be a major concern now. we had attacks on cell towers before, including toppling them over.

seems unlikely that's going to happen also those people have trouble using a spanner imo. Weren't they trying to set fire to them or something?

Indeed. Few people have the gear to loosen nuts of the size likely used. One would need to find out the size and then source appropriate size gear (it's not cheap). I suggest for somebody bent on destruction, that faster, more destructive methods using non specialized hardware might be more appealing.

Might also suggest that there are few people crazy enough to attack the power grid:

Thankfully crazy people are fairly low in number.
It's actually fairly resilient. A random attack (or even something targeted as something seemingly critical like the HVDC link) could well see no power outages at all.

As seen here (a fairly worst case situation, loosing a double circuit line while a single circuit on the parallel double circuit lie was out for service, feeding a region with little generation), had most power restored the same evening, and everybody by noon the next day, and a full capacity restored in just a few days.

Of course somebody with specific industry knowledge could do a lot more damage, but's lets hope those people aren't crazy. (and I won't give examples on a public forum)
Generally their is not much hate for power transmission
1. Main objection to the line itself is typically visual amenity, and once it is built that battle is clearly lost. Chopping down poles is just going to see them repaired as many times as needed.
2. Generally people like having their lights and fridges working. Indeed one of the fox news fueled anti-EV claims is that they EV's are going to break the power grid.
3. Environmental activists aren't going to attack the gird as it is the greenest energy source we have.
4. Electricity girds are very old, so not much new and scary about them.
5. 5G crazies seem to be concerned specifically with Mobile phone towers, not all EMF
It's quite dangerous, and gives off visual que's to that effect.

sir1963

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#3252560 24-Jun-2024 14:52

Scott3:

gzt: "Too many nuts were removed" how many is too many?

There will be a procedure for work requiring nut removal, which will set out an engineered answer to this. (and likely a requirement to monitor winds so all nuts are installed for windstorms).

All we really need to know as the general public is that all them from 3/4 feet = too many removed.

Why were they simply not replaced with new ones one at a time and then torqued down properly...so this cost of this screw up vs the cost of new nuts...

tweake

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#3252562 24-Jun-2024 14:59

sir1963:

Why were they simply not replaced with new ones one at a time and then torqued down properly...so this cost of this screw up vs the cost of new nuts...

i suspect its probably to many cooks in the kitchen with the emphasis on speed to get the job done fast at all costs. quite often its to many crew so things get done out sequence. the guys undoing the bolts faster than the other guys can do the work and get them back on.

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sir1963

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#3252565 24-Jun-2024 15:03

tweake:

sir1963:

Why were they simply not replaced with new ones one at a time and then torqued down properly...so this cost of this screw up vs the cost of new nuts...

i suspect its probably to many cooks in the kitchen with the emphasis on speed to get the job done fast at all costs. quite often its to many crew so things get done out sequence. the guys undoing the bolts faster than the other guys can do the work and get them back on.

It takes just as long to remove a set of nuts as it does to put them on. Bet you they only had one tool... and we told to reuse the old nuts to "save money"

allan

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#3252575 24-Jun-2024 15:28

I do feel Stuff have missed a headline opportunity here. Something along then lines of" "Screw-loose Nuts Remove Too Many"

I'll see myself out...

tweake

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#3252579 24-Jun-2024 15:33

sir1963:

It takes just as long to remove a set of nuts as it does to put them on. Bet you they only had one tool... and we told to reuse the old nuts to "save money"

the problem wasn't caused by faulty nuts, it was caused by taken them off all at once.

it looks like they undo one leg of the tower, inspect, clean and paint the base plate, and put nuts back on. except someone tried to do three legs at once.

more than likely it was like the crane collapse in canada where the guys where removing the crane, where meant to unbolt one section at a time, but someone went ahead and unbolted a whole lot of the sections. which made it fall down. trying to speed it up by doing some of the work early. most likely thats whats happened on the tower, while the other legs where being inspected, cleaned etc, someone went ahead and undone the other legs out of the normal sequence.

i get this all the time at work. people thinking they are helping make things go faster but all they do is cause problems.

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#3252580 24-Jun-2024 15:38

tweake:

sir1963:

Why were they simply not replaced with new ones one at a time and then torqued down properly...so this cost of this screw up vs the cost of new nuts...

i suspect its probably to many cooks in the kitchen with the emphasis on speed to get the job done fast at all costs. quite often its to many crew so things get done out sequence. the guys undoing the bolts faster than the other guys can do the work and get them back on.

My armchair guess is that it was quicker/more efficient to work many bolts at at a time. I understand they were sandblasting the tower flanges and re-grouting between the flange and concrete foundation. Imagine undoing one nut, then sandblasting where it was, then applying protective coating, then retightening the nut, then starting all again for the next nut, and repeating that whole procedure a few dozen times on that one tower (I'm assuming there's a few bolts per tower leg). It would be a lot quicker to remove all nuts, sandblast the whole flange, coat the whole flange, and retighten the nuts. Even doing a whole flange at a time, you'd probably still have a few workers standing around at various points - so can certainly imagine the attraction to cut corners and save time/cost, unfortunately.

sir1963

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#3252583 24-Jun-2024 15:50

nickb800:

My armchair guess is that it was quicker/more efficient to work many bolts at at a time. I understand they were sandblasting the tower flanges and re-grouting between the flange and concrete foundation. Imagine undoing one nut, then sandblasting where it was, then applying protective coating, then retightening the nut, then starting all again for the next nut, and repeating that whole procedure a few dozen times on that one tower (I'm assuming there's a few bolts per tower leg). It would be a lot quicker to remove all nuts, sandblast the whole flange, coat the whole flange, and retighten the nuts. Even doing a whole flange at a time, you'd probably still have a few workers standing around at various points - so can certainly imagine the attraction to cut corners and save time/cost, unfortunately.

You do one leg at a time.

It's like rock climbing, you always keep 3 points of contact. This is NOT rocket science.

wellygary

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#3252586 24-Jun-2024 15:56

sir1963:

You do one leg at a time.

It's like rock climbing, you always keep 3 points of contact. This is NOT rocket science.

Apparently SOP is one nut at a time, so one leg would be extreme, but still safe..

Three out of four legs unbolted is just a huge invitation to whatever deity you believe in to "push that button"

tweake

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#3252587 24-Jun-2024 16:00

nickb800:

you'd probably still have a few workers standing around at various points - so can certainly imagine the attraction to cut corners and save time/cost, unfortunately.

thats exactly what happens in this type of accident.

to much focus on speed, cut corners, or simply "looks like your doing something". i've struck it before with people who have been taught to "look busy", "find something to do", which also means they are not following instructions or procedures. very very hard to unteach that.

neb

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#3252588 24-Jun-2024 16:03

tweake: it looks like they undo one leg of the tower, inspect, clean and paint the base plate, and put nuts back on. except someone tried to do three legs at once.

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