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I have never seen a transformator explosion in Germany or Europe. What is different in the american power grid?
I live about two blocks away. The lights dimmed and one of our breakers flipped. Then it got bad. My phone suddenly lit up, brighter than the night's electric blue sky, as everyone I've ever known called and texted to ask about what was going on. Nothing interesting. Astoria is a pretty great neighborhood tho. We have a 24-hour fruit market next to another 24-hour fruit market.
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What is the cause?
Theft, mainly. A transformer is a big lump of copper, but even the oil is meaningfully valuable in a low-income country. There are reports of widespread transformer oil theft across Africa and South-East Asia. Draining a transformer of oil is easy, it'll earn you a few naira and it'll inevitably lead to the transformer burning itself out in spectacular fashion. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/12/thiev…
Why don't they add some things to:
(a) make it taste horrid,
(b) make it smell horrendous when burnt?
Living in Astoria, NY and this happened a mile away from me. At first my TV blips, my spotify shuts down and outside you could see this very bright turquoise light all over the place. It was bright like it was a daytime just in the green blue color. At first I thought it must had been some fireworks nearby, New Year is coming, right? But there was no fireworks noise, no party noise, nothing, just this bright green li…
> In the end I rushed to the rooftop, scared as f I'm glad that you were ok. I would probably have over-reacted by diving under the bed. The lesson that I took from the footage of the Chelyabinsk meteor (1) is this: When people see a sudden bright light in the sky, the usual reaction is for them to go to the window to see what it is. So then the blast wave arrives in time to give them a face full of flying glass shar…
I dunno. Might increase the average IQ in the gene pool?
I have never seen a transformator explosion in Germany or Europe. What is different in the american power grid?
https://electrical-engineering-portal.com/north-american-ver... This page has a good diagram showing the difference between US and EU distribution systems - how the US has many small transformers vs the EU having few large ones, and how US customers get three-wire single phase vs EU three-phase
I suspect this is offset greatly by the differences in infra, where EU uses buried cables instead of US style utility poles.
“No injuries, no fire, no evidence of extraterrestrial activity,” made me chuckle
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> In the end I rushed to the rooftop, scared as f I'm glad that you were ok. I would probably have over-reacted by diving under the bed. The lesson that I took from the footage of the Chelyabinsk meteor (1) is this: When people see a sudden bright light in the sky, the usual reaction is for them to go to the window to see what it is. So then the blast wave arrives in time to give them a face full of flying glass shar…
> Nothing good will come of having a look-see. I dunno. Might increase the average IQ in the gene pool?
On the other hand, if innate curiosity about environmental phenomena is at all correlated with IQ, it could result in a lowering of the average IQ instead.
I have never seen a transformator explosion in Germany or Europe. What is different in the american power grid?
US power distribution is way more distributed than in Europe, in which everything is planned and centralized. In the US there are transformers everywhere, you can see a house and a small transformer nearby. In Europe they have this big monsters that cost several million dollars and require a train to move. In Europe transformers in the city use to be underground and you won't see anything but a blackout of power. It…
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I think the battle is lost, but I'm a little bit sad seeing the sky over a city being filmed in vertical video.
Though it makes sense if you're watching it on your phone maximised in its natural orientation.
Even a phenomenon like this. Could we use it for lighting a whole City for less power than streetlamps?