Cutting a high-voltage power line - video

[mklotz]

Reminds me of the recent super-hero culture. "Here, wear this magic suit and nothing will happen to you." Yeah, right. I guess I'm just too old. I'm from the era where you turn off the breaker before installing the new outlet.

Risking people's lives so a bunch of customers won't have their daily dose of "Judge Judy" interrupted just seems a bad trade-off.

[Frank S]

If it were just a matter of Susie homemaker missing Judge Judy or Tommy couch potato missing a re run of the family guy I would have to agree with Marv However we all know that life is much more involved than that to shut down the line might have effected several thousand small and large business putting countless number of workers out of work for who knows how long this would also have probably effected many Emergency service facilities as well as critical life care facilities, Financial corporations communications operations and the list goes on and on and on.
Killing a high voltage power line by opening the contacts at a power station or substation does not imeadiatly kill the line virtually everything down-line becomes potentially a capacitor or a back feed generator for a while which means not only does the switch need to be opened but the line must be de-energized and subsequently Earthed to ground for the period of the repairs being made. Replacing old power lines with new ones is even more involved as the new line will become energized just laying on the ground with static electricity.
My hat is off to the guys who have to work in these environments As a young-ling for a while I worked at a company which designed and manufactured high tension stringing equipment. One of my later business partners actually held several patents for some of that machinery but he also had patents on a design for 20 ft diameter a hydraulic motor which was being developed to rotate the turret of the big guns in battle ships of which only the prototype was ever made due to the era of the ending of the requirement to build another battle ship but that is another story.

[Frank S]

What am I missing here? the guy has hold of the end of a downed high tension power line which is obviously still energized as evidence when it hits the ground, yet it was not showing any arcing while hung on the metal street lamp pole.

[metric_taper]

Frank, I was bothered by this as well. I looked for a link, but only found the news story that had the police officer interviewed. But It lacks any technical explanation (TV news media source). I'm believing this was a low tension line, appears to have insulation, and somehow a high voltage short contacted it right at the same time it hit the ground. But even that seems remote in probability.
There clearly is something else going on that is not being told.

[Ralphxyz]

If the line is cut somebody will lose power.

Now I want to to see how the reconnect the "live" wire!!

I will not be surprised if they cut the power.

Ralph

[Frank S]

Like Marv said about his father having to switch power at a substation to kill lines in certain areas while leaving others live. This would be by far the preferred method.
Since we have no way of knowing where the line terminated on the other end I will make a summation that the main line probably fed a metropolitan area and the branch line they cut possibly went to a substation which for all we know may have been in the path or at risk of being overtaken by a wild fire or possibly sustained damage due to a storm. We can only hazard a guess, but it is clear to me that there must have been a load on it somewhere down stream they were unable to clear otherwise there would have been very little to no arc when the line was cut

[Jon]

Mylar ballon + power line = internet sensation. This is available as a GIF too, but then you don't get the awesome sound. 21-second video:

[Jon]

17-second video. You can hear the branch screaming as its steaming:

[Jon]

Downed power line on swingset.

[Ralphxyz]

Good thing no one is leaning on the fence.