Discuss Accident at Chelmsford substation in the Electrical Forum area at ElectriciansForums.net

Welcome to ElectriciansForums.net - The American Electrical Advice Forum
Head straight to the main forums to chat by click here:   American Electrical Advice Forum

V

Victorcrane

Hi folks, as some of you may recall I'm merely a student of this trade so I was wondering if someone could clarify something for me, sorry if it's a bit complicated to explain....

Last week a poor chap in Chelmsford was working on a substation when it exploded and he was killed. There has been much speculation about how exactly this happened but I was given an account of what may be the case today at college. (I'm at Chelmsford college so as you can imagine there is much interest in this among my tutors)

I'm told that the guy was working on the transformer with the gates open so it would have been under no load. Once the work was done, EDF informed him he could go ahead and close the gates, connecting the transformer back to the grid, but a miscalculation had taken place, and there was a much greater current being drawn from the transformer than it could handle, which caused it to fail so spectacularly.

If this is the case, I'm confused as to how there would be no safeguard in place to prevent such a catastrophic failure of the system. We haven't looked at the possibility of too much load being drawn from a transformer at college, as we've been led to believe throughout the course that such a situation should never occur. How is this possible, what exactly happens, and what should have been in place to prevent it?

Sorry again if this is all a bit much, but my tutors are stuck for time with a million staffing shortages and nobody seems to be available to explain it to me. I'd be very grateful for any info.

All the best guys.

Vic. :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Shame the guy got killed ,not sure why it happend or why he was inside the gate ,when the transformer was switched to full load ,i thought they used a castell or similar key system ,it should have been impossable:mad:
 

Attachments

  • Accident at Chelmsford substation equation%20cartoon - EletriciansForums.net
    equation%20cartoon.jpg
    28 KB · Views: 60
One of my mates worked with the poor chap on EDF and he said he was there rewinding a coil when it shorted out don't know to much more than that but he also said he was retiring soon.
 

Reply to Accident at Chelmsford substation in the Electrical Forum area at ElectriciansForums.net

OFFICIAL SPONSORS

Electrical Goods - Electrical Tools - Brand Names Electrician Courses Green Electrical Goods PCB Way Electrical Goods - Electrical Tools - Brand Names Pushfit Wire Connectors Electric Underfloor Heating Electrician Courses
These Official Forum Sponsors May Provide Discounts to Regular Forum Members - If you would like to sponsor us then CLICK HERE and post a thread with who you are, and we'll send you some stats etc

Electrical Forum

Welcome to the Electrical Forum at ElectriciansForums.net. The friendliest electrical forum online. General electrical questions and answers can be found in the electrical forum.
This website was designed, optimised and is hosted by Untold Media. Operating under the name Untold Media since 2001.
Back
Top
AdBlock Detected

We get it, advertisements are annoying!

Sure, ad-blocking software does a great job at blocking ads, but it also blocks useful features of our website. For the best site experience please disable your AdBlocker.

I've Disabled AdBlock