Saltwater fizzes up CUC lines, causing outages
(CNS): Last week’s Nor’wester caused severe salt contamination to power lines around Grand Cayman, particularly in western and coastal areas, CUC has said. This salt contamination can cause electricity to track across the devices, resulting in buzzing and crackling sounds along with visible arc flashes. A spokesperson from CUC explained to CNS that this is the probable cause of the noise and flashes reported by residents in North West Point on Tuesday evening, many of whom said they had seen an explosion.
The power company confirmed there was a fault on a device that led to that outage, but the cause remains under investigation. Over 2,000 customers were impacted, but it is understood that most people experienced a relatively brief outage.
CUC said staff had been inspecting and systematically washing the devices with fresh water, prioritising the most critical areas to minimise the impact of potential faults.
- Fascinated
- Happy
- Sad
- Angry
- Bored
- Afraid
Category: Business, Local News, utilities
Govt needs to dip into the pockets and bury the damn power lines. Such a eye sore.
CI Government doesn’t own the transmission grid, CUC does, and their license gets automatically renewed soon for 20 more years.
I totally understand the work that has been happening this past week, but it would be very helpful if when they close down roads and roundabouts that they put up detour signs or have an officer stationed further down the road to offer assistance. As a tourist, I have been lost twice this week and took quite some driving around to find my way to my Airbnb. Just a suggestion.
Is your Air B&B one of the legally permitted ones driving up rental prices for those who live here or one of the illegal ones also driving up rental prices?
Underground Cables: Higher up-front costs, lower maintenance costs, longer down time when they are damaged. … Like if sea water were to get into the underground pipes I suppose, like after a storm that pushed lots of sea water into the areas where said wires came into certain buildings. #TradeOffs&JudgementCalls
If cables can survive ocean beds, pretty sure they can survive underground.
Yes. But no one I’ve heard yet suggesting burying those sorts of cables, which are thickly sealed every mm of the way since every junction is a potential weak spot for water intrusion and so you couldn’t actually tap your house into them if they ran through your yard. Not without even greater expense than that of burying the cable in the first place. (Because now you have to seal the entire CUC transformer that’s up on the light pole by your house, along with the junction where your power line gets the power from the transformer.) So, yes, we could use subsea standard cables in place of overhead but … #TradeOffs&JudgementCalls.
If you think CUC outages is a problem with wires above ground, imagine the outages when Logic, Flow, the Water Company and Water Authority, Developers cut underground lines daily!
Seems we did not learn from Ivan that power lines should be underground.
Who’s going to pay for it? You?
The straw man argument has entered the chat room
Actually I did. When I built my house I asked CUC to bury the incoming supply cable instead of stringing across the road to another pole. Wasn’t that expensive at all.
Oh yeah give specifics. I bet your talking about underground service to your house. You really wouldn’t want to know the cost and logistics involved in burying single phase distribution just across your property line much less 3 phase or worse transmission lines. Rich guy in east end thought it was a good idea too.
Do you think we aren’t already paying? Good grief.
or hosed down after a storm.
They don’t have enough hosers at CUC, or at least not the kind that hose down the transmission lines.
Underground power lines capital cost is 7 to 10 times as much as overland and really are only cost effective (and physically viable) in some areas, and could impair other underground utilities such as, water, gas and telecommunications.
As a benefit, they are not subject to wind damage and falling trees.
As a downside, they are incredibly expensive and difficult to identify any damage and to repair as have to excavate the land and open the surrounding conduit. With overland on the other hand, can easily visually inspect and repair quickly.
So tradeoffs. Can be done but not free and not simple (on a mass scale)
Yup! Having witnessed roads being resurfaced, and Water Authority arriving a few days later to dig trenches (lack of coordination), can you imagine what could happen if cables are laid and WA and other contractors go mad with their excavators!
You mean like all the water mains that are struck by excavators? You do realise that underground cables are armoured and marked and digging requires a permit.
Digging requires a permit … right.
There was talk after Ivan of updating code for all new developments to have underground utilities.