Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rice!uw-beaver!fluke!witters
From: witters@tc.fluke.COM (John Witters)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: New Year's Eve idiocy: Plus Hawaiian Hurricanes!
Message-ID: <1991Jan25.162922.10692@tc.fluke.COM>
Date: 25 Jan 91 16:29:22 GMT
References: <4655@wrgate.WR.TEK.COM> <2525.2796c1e3@verifone.com>
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
Lines: 34

In article <2525.2796c1e3@verifone.com> ed_l1@verifone.com writes:
>In article <4655@wrgate.WR.TEK.COM>, jeffw@midas.WR.TEK.COM (Jeff Winslow) writes:
>
>In Hawaii, during hurricane Iwa in ('82?), we had high winds, lightning, 
>rain, and every once in a while a huge, no _*HUGE*_ green flash that lit
>up the entire island (I live on the windward side, they were coming over
>the mountains!)!  Later, the media informed us that they were, "transformer
>explosions," whatever THAT is....  And yes, we lost our electricity, for
>about a week. :-(
>
>I think, also, that I heard somewhere that there is a lot of ionization 
>in the air during intense storms... could relate to your situation.

I guess this is plausible.  I seem to remember reading about a problem Quebec
Hydro had with sunspots.  I'm hazy about the details, but I think the sunspots
caused a difference in potential between the generator and the transformer at
the end of the transmission lines.  The resulting DC current through the
transformer saturated the core, radically reducing its efficiency.  The wasted
energy (several megawatts?) has to go someplace, and the transformers got very
hot very quickly.

Don't trust my memory on this.  Maybe a power engineer in Canada can give us
the straight story, eh?

-John

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