Power Plant Substation Explodes
On August 17th 1993, the Ives Dairy Substation in Miami, Florida experienced a total system failure. It started when a power surge on the Miami grid fried one of the capacitor banks and caused a breaker to trip open. Unfortunately, the breaker malfunctioned and created an arc fault (a continuous lightning bolt that acted like an uncontrollable welding torch from hell) between the hot side of the breaker and wherever it could find a ground to complete the circuit, thus pulling far more current then the facility was designed for. Unknown to FPL operators at the time, the emergency response system that would have notified the grid dispatcher of a serious problem (who would have then cut the power to the substation and neighborhood to kill the arc fault) was inoperative, and no message was ever sent. Since the dispatcher had no way of knowing about the arc fault, the substation continued to self-destruct. The uncontrolled arc fault caused the coolant (mineral oil) inside the primary transformer to overheat to critical levels until it was boiling in a highly flammable state. This boiling caused pressure to rise inside the transformer (like a pressure cooker) until the seals finally blew. Mineral oil vapor proceeded to pour out at that point (the plume of white fog at the end) which ignited on the arc fault. The flames caused by this immediately ignited back to the source, (the boiling transformer tank), which ignited the mother load of oil inside, causing the substation to explode in a giant ball of fire. The sudden loss of all transformer coolant resulted in a simultaneous flash-meltdown of the transformers innards, which immediately caused the main high voltage fuse to overload and blow (the loud explosion at the end), finally killing the arc. As a side note, even though it sounds like a million things went wrong, there were really only two main things that went wrong. Arcing is actually very common when a breaker opens since the breaker has hundreds of thousands of volts running through it. And capacitor bank failures are common since they can fry in the event of a power surge. The UNCOMMON event that caused this was the fact that the arc-fault suppression system (the system that extinguishes the arc), and the Emergency Response System (that would have told the grid dispatcher that something was STILL wrong) were both placed on the same circuit breaker, and that breaker was faulty. Those two backup systems are really the only final thing a substation has in order to prevent this from happening in your neighborhood, and both of them were inoperative in this instance because of that bad circuit breaker, (and the fact that someone put both the backup system and the auxiliary backup system on the same circuit to begin with - a big no no). You can view an aerial photo of the substation location here: https://www.google.com/maps/@25.9674199,-80.1829731,86m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en (Note: this is a current map photo of the newly rebuilt, slimmed down substation that sits where the old substation used to be.)
Comments
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Well, there went that... looks like a full rebuild.
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was this the film set of the next John Cena intro trailer?
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It looks to me like short circuit brought the oil to a boil, the vapours caught th hot arc and ignited. And as we know, fire is plasma and its very conductive so fire shorted the high voltage side, activating the high voltage protection systems. I could be wrong though, but as soon as the high voltage side does a bang, flamethrower slowly subsides and there seem to be no puddles of burning oil "from the exploded tank"
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That was a nice beefy thud when that overload opened up.
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Dear customer, because of recent maintenance costs you will notice a slight increase in your electric bill starting from when the smoke dies down.
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BROUGHT TO YOU BY MICHEAL BAY
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DAMN WOW
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Lmao Oml
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DAMN! THAT WAS INSANE! There was a similar incident at the Sammamish Substation [but not as fatal- just a small fire- the fire dept. got it before it could go into the phases the Ives Dairy Substation went through.
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so cool love it
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If there are magnetic forces at work within the substation, can a person be pulled into the magnetic field?
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Who was the manufacturer of that transformer?
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That is one toxic fire ball!
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another twat using a 11 kw shower at home caused this
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"Total System Failure"= largest goddamn understatement of the whole fucking 90s!
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you wouldnt want to be this close, there's oil in those devices that could rain down and burn you
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FIRE IN THE HOLE. That was so cool. Let it blow
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Wow.
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what year did it blew up
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Probably bapped out power to a lot of people as well!
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