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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Crazy electrical failures...

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Grogster

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Joined: 31/12/2012
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 9789
Posted: 08:08am 23 Dec 2025
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This video IS a bit sensationalist, but I still liked it.

ELECTRICAL FAILURES....

May your Christmas be fault-free.    
Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops!
 
Mixtel90

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Joined: 05/10/2019
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 8382
Posted: 09:11am 23 Dec 2025
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Lovely stuff, electricity. :)

The first one looked like a busbar fire. Something that happens occasionally, just as any insulator fires do. Temperature changes, mechanical stress (directly or invisible because of fault levels between adjacent conductors trying to move them), they all cause problems.  :(

The package switch rooms we put in on one site had a "chicken switch" right by the door. Press that and all the breakers open, including the external ones feeding the local bus. You can't be too careful.

I had the pleasure of watching an air-break 36kV fuse switch being tested. That was nice, in a special HV test room (now long gone, unfortunately). :)  The thing was the size of a small room, with the air break switch and separate HV fuses in a steel box with polycarbonate sheets spaced off the walls on post insulators. The HV puts a charge on both sided of the sheet. The charge is proportional to the distance from the conductor.
Mick

Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini
Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs
 
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