[ On Saturday, December 11, 1999 at 03:02:07 (-0500), Steve Sobol wrote: ]
Subject: Re: [announce-all] NAC Maintenance this weekend (fwd)
The last time a transformer blew near my house, all that happened is that some of the neighbors lost power for a while.
Well..... The last time a transformer as big as the one I assume the story was talking about blew in a warehouse here in Toronto, the entire corner of the building was knocked out. I don't remember the details, but that one's definitely in the records -- check the Toronto Star or Toronto Sun over the past five years or so (my memory of the timing of recent events is about as fuzzy as a bank of fog). I've also heard a story second hand (from someone at the site) of a backup generator (or buffer generator) that failed (it was three-phase, something about one phase not switching over I think) which similarly blew the side of a building out when it failed. This was back in the early 80's or maybe even late 70's, and I believe it was a mainframe datacentre (or factory powerplant), also somewhere in Ontario. We had an ordinary 4Kv single-phase house transformer blow up after being struck by lightning on our farm in the 70's too, but I guess that's a different scale of surge..... :-) -- Greg A. Woods +1 416 218-0098 VE3TCP <gwoods@acm.org> <robohack!woods> Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>