Residential Power Outage in Waterman, Illinois

Jim,

Sorry to hear of your troubles.

I find it rather unlikely that you received all this damage as a result of the power being restored.

Try talking to other people in the village as to the damage they experienced. You get enough people with the same observations and damages, I don't see how ComEd could refuse the claim if you want to pursue it that way.

On a side note, in my experience I have found that it is easier to get a claim through a home owner policy for lightning damage for replacement of electronics, lamps, appliances, ect. than it is for a power surge claim with the local utility.

Is there any possibility you took a lightning hit while the power was off and the damage became apparent after power was restored? Like I said, ask around and find out what others in you area with damage experienced.

Good Luck to you sir!

Thank you very much.....There are dozens of people all over town that lost ALL their appliances, washers, dryers, deep freezes, computers, refridgerators, big screen TVs, so I don't think I personally got hit alone by lightning. The Village of Waterman office itself lost two copying machines, a computer, ALL their radios that were plugged in charging, and their fridge and microwave in their lunchroom. Thanks for the advice about homeowner insurance......, hadn't considered that cuz the city itself is all worked up about this cuz it is so widespread !!!! Thank you.

Get a lawyer; file a class action lawsuit. Write letters to your local congressperson, senators, state legislators.

Homeowner's insurance doesn't cover the damages?

The sad thing is that end user can't estimate the damage untill power is back on, meaning the damage could very well have been done at the time of the lightning. Anyway if I were in a similar situation, I would check my expensive devices for repairable damages before plugging back, and making damages irepairable. Of course if lightning was near the house I wouldn't hope for too much. S.M.

Thank you.....Common sense tells me the damage was caused at the same time there was this loud pop and flash of light in the kitchen when the power came back on. The lightning was long gone by then. I was standing on the front porch for hours watching the downpour. Wouldn't you think if lightning hit my house I would have been aware of it ??? Heard it ???

It isn't nessesery so, Jim. My first phrase was 'can't estimate the damage untill power is back on'. Some components fry instantly on overvoltage, but lightning surge last for very short time, and if grid power goes down, you may see no symptoms. A partially damaged device will possibly blow when power is back or some time after. This is common for semiconductor based devices. S.M.

Sorry to say but without examining your dead equipment I can see a real scenario that the root cause was a lightning indirect strike.

When the lightning indirect strike happened, an EMP pulse shorted out several components in your household appliances. Simultaneously this EMP caused the grid protection to isolate your neighborhood from the rest of the grid. Possibly a power line was actually physically down and this caused the three hour delay for power to return. When power actually returned to your home, the damaged still connected appliances now get the full surge power of a short circuit through their wires. Flash! Bang! Pop!

You have lightening damage. Contact your insurance company.

If you live at the top of a hill, you might want to get a whole house surge arrestor to help mitigate this from happening again. If you have some very tall trees in the area, you might consider some lightning rods to prevent a local discharge. Other than this...

This is exactly what I needed to hear. Thank you ever so much !!!

This post will identify something completely different from what most said. When power is lost, a transformer that services hundreds or a thousand customers was automatically increasing voltage before a circuit breaker cut power off. Every circuit of that size has a voltage adjusting transformer somewhere. To increase voltage as necessary so that load changes cause only minor voltage changes.

When a lineman restores (reconnects) that transformer, he is expected to manual crank that adjustment back down before restoring power. In some cases (and I have talked to at least two linemen who made mistakes) a lineman forget to make the adjustment. Something in excess of 180 volts was applied to 120 volt service.

Your description is classic of that mistake. Lightning did not cause damage to so many customers. Lightning does not have anywhere near the energy provided by a utility. Normally, power up is always without overvoltage. But in this type restoration, if the lineman tried to restore power too quickly (made a mistake), then voltage can be too high until the transformer finally adjusts back to were it should be.

This type failure usually means the utility pays.

i'm not sure I've seen auto-tap changers with such a wide ratio before. The ones I've seen usually only have a 10 or 15% range from nominal, but my experience with them are quite limited.

No, sorry. Not even close to being universally true. SOME transformers have tap changers, but they are very expensive and the use of them is RARELY entrusted to a lineman. I don't know where you got your story from, but it may have been an localized incedent. In most cases when there has been a lightning strike, large sections of the grid are shut down automatically eiotyher as a direct result of known damage or as a precaution. Then in some cases there are automatic re-closers that attempt one or two reconnections. If the system sees damage in those attempts, they isolate the area with the damage so they can get everyone else back on line, THEN they send out the linemen to find it and repair it. The only time a lineman recloses anything is when it is a (relatively) small distribution transformer being fed by something like a pole line disconnect. System wide grid switches are NOT handled manually unless all else fails!

> Not even close to being universally true. SOME transformers have tap

> changers, but they are very expensive and the use of them is RARELY

> entrusted to a lineman.

So those linemen who had just finished replacing copper on those auto-taps for the transformer were not replacing anything. A transformer that is common to hundreds or a thousands customers also performs voltage regulation. As gideon also said, I thought they were only limited to 15% voltage adjustments. But in one catastrophic event, factory line monitors had measured that excessive voltage when power was restored.

I once stumbled upon a lineman in the 1970s who was on a three day suspension. He had also forgotten to reset voltage regulation before applying power. Appliances such as refrigerators were damaged.

The OP's event did not happen because lightning struck 200 pole transformers. Lightning has neither the energy to do all that damage. Nor the ability to strike hundreds of transformers simultaneously. Damage that widespread requires excessive voltage from a higher energy source - the utility.

Lightning may have started a chain of events. But the actual damage must be from a utility mistake that provided far too much voltage during power restoration. Normally, power restoration never creates an excessive voltage.

I don't know much about utility power but I suspect that the utility equipment is installed in a manner that prevents them from turning it on "wrong". (Someone with knowledge please correct me if I am wrong.)

Three options seem to be worth considering:

1) Damage was done by THE lightning strike that took out power or ANOTHER lightning strike while the power was out. You seem to be describing "all over town" and if that is true then it does seem like too much equipment over too large an area (note use of word "seem" twice).

2) A major transformer was damaged or the wires to/from major wires may have been damaged in a manner that effectively changed the turns ratios. This would be a bit like the lightning damage rewiring good utility equipment so it is incorrectly wired and produces too much secondary voltage. This seems like a very long shot to me but with hundreds of thousands or millions of utility transformers in the country and millions of lightning strikes per year I guess it could happen somewhere.

3) This might not make sense for a large area but when my neighbor's neutral wire broke open the washer and dryer loaded down one side of the house's power. The high voltage on the other side caused the FM radio to burst into flames. There was no storm involved in this but a storm could do it. My neighbor was getting a bunch of you know what from the power company about how it was impossible, it was not their fault and they had no responsibility to pay. In this case I was present and in the mood to defend my neighbor. I took the phone from my neighbor, informed the power company that both the Police Department and Fire Department were still there and I requested the correct spelling of the power company person's name and the incident tracking number so we could be sure these items were correct in the emergency services paperwork. Surprise, surprise, the power company said that they were sorry for the problem, they would send someone out soon and they would pay for all the damages.

Can I offer anything useful? Well, possibly only this. There is a chance that a business or utility office might have a voltage monitor running and recording the line voltage. The bad news is that if there was one then someone from the power company may have gotten the record from them and put it in a "safe place" to help prevent it from causing confusion as they deal with their customers. If, by chance, there is a record and it is still available then that might help you.

If your homeowner's insurance will pay then that is probably the better way to go. Trying to get the power company to pay means you are playing hardball in their stadium. Their ball, their game, their stadium and the sun is in your eyes. Yes, you could win but ....

Having a single neutral wire for two opposing circuits in houses seems to be a common and acceptable way to save the cost of copper wire, but in my opinion it is highly dangerous and should be outlawed.

Ultimately it comes down the simple concept of,

IT'S YOUR RESPOSIBILITY TO PROTECT YOUR STUFF FROM WHAT OTHERS MAY DO OR NOT DO.

i've heard the loud pop and seen blue flames and bright light after a tranformer on a power pole was struck by lightening.

did you or your nieghbors notice any repairs done to to the power lines after the storm?

This is a question that everybody needs to know about, who lives anywhere with electricity. We have a lot of outages here for various reasons not usually lightning, and it's not uncommon for us to have long outages and power rationing for a day or two.

I've been told before that the best precaution is to unplug any precious gear before the outage, if the weather conditions are such as to expect it. But it's also advised to unplug your gear when you have had an outage, and minimize the demand on the grid when suddenly everything is turned on. It's also advised to minimize your power consumption at the times of peak demand when the community is dealing with a crippled grid. And leave anything precious unplugged for the while, or take your chances.

I found this page on power outages and I quote:

• Turn off all tools, appliances and electronic equipment, and turn the thermostat(s) for the home heating system down to minimum to prevent damage from a power surge when power is restored. Also, power can be restored more easily when there is not a heavy load on the electrical system.
• Turn off all lights, except one inside and one outside, so that both you and hydro crews outside know that power has been restored.

Just an Engineer, you touched on a subject that few people take in to consideration. And that is, any weather related power outages, there is some linemen,(persons), out there in that same weather working. So the next time your out driving around looking at storm damage and you see a someone working to restore power, offer them a cup of coffee or tea. Who knows, you just might get your power back on a little sooner.

This happened several years ago in a northern NJ county. Doesn't sound like it was the same as your situation but it certainly is worth looking into.

A storm came through the town I was working in. Knocked out most of the power in town and trees pulled down some transformers and wires. Power Co. came out very quickly and determined that it would take several hours to get power back on to most places but it would take at least a day or more to replace the poles and transformers. They would splice the existing fallen wires as they were to get power up in the mean time.

When they reconnected the power 3 houses caught on fire, at least a dozen meter panels blew out, numerous C/B panels were charred or caught on fire, flat panel TV's were blown across the rooms, computers were charred, microwaves were dead, and numerous other appliances and electrical devices were history.

The Cause-- When the power co reconnected the wires they crossed the upper high voltage distribution wires with the lower household distribution wires. I was told that it was at least 1,440 volts instead of 240v. Fortunately the power co realized their mistake and shut it down. I didn't have time to investigate it further because I was responding with the F D. We had at least half the fire Co's in the county out for it.

Power co quietly took all written statements and settled all claims.

Worth investigating in your situation possibly.

Good Luck, Old Salt

Lightning/Surge protectors in Utility's lines as well as Surge protectors in consumer's premises should give certain degree of protection.

You have had plenty of good advice thrown your way so all I can add is this. The whole house surge protectors are expensive but they do work. My parents added one to their house several years ago. They purchased it through the power company. The power company installed it and added a few dollars each month to their electric bill for the device until it was paid off. I do not know if a program like this is available in your area but it could help out on the initial cost if you do not mind payments. I should have put one on my service line long ago. But it's like a leaky roof. You don't think much of it until it's raining.

If you remember this folk song it will be stuck in your head all day.

There's a hole in my bucket dear Liza, dear Liza, dear Liza. There's a hole in my bucket dear Liza, a hole.

Switch Off.

Unfortunately for you, the courts have long held that such surges related to Acts of God are not the responsibility of the electric company. Check your homeowners insurance and buy new appliances. Not a battle you can win in the courts.

REgards/J

Thank you.

For acts of God like lightning,tsunami etc man has developed warning/preventing devices.Power companies/utilities must take precautionary measures instead of blaming the God or nature.Judges should consult engineers conversant with those technologies before delivering judgement in these instances.