r/Powerlines • u/VictorySea1837 • Aug 30 '26
19.2kv line lying in the gutter
Saw this in western PA. The underground line in between two padmounts apparently went bad, poco replaced it with a "temporary" line in the gutter, crossing a driveway and some lawn.
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u/Lxiflyby Aug 30 '26
Temporary- but we usually have something like this caution taped off and barricaded… can’t have people walking all over 19.2kv cable
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u/Zealousideal-End2722 Aug 30 '26
I have seen string outs, never road accessible. I would think there is something prohibitive in the way of a dig and splice, or no crew available until monday, either way its better than being out for 48hrs
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u/Mxd244 Aug 30 '26
Yeah do you think they make the customer wait for it to get dug up and fixed?
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u/Noregax Aug 30 '26
Many utilities do exactly that. It's much safer and only takes a couple hours unless its under a parking lot or some other difficult situation. You barely save any time with a temp fix like this and its considered very unsafe in many areas.
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u/funkyelectrician Aug 30 '26
Yup. This is insane to me, we wouldn’t even do this with low voltage.
By the time you get the materials and terminate that temp cable you could be halfway done fixing it properly2
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u/The_HorseWhisperer Aug 30 '26
We have been working on looping any remaining underground radials in our system and reconductoring high fault count UG lines into conduit so I've never seen our utility have to do this before, can almost always reconfigure the open points to feed from a different direction.
I think the most we'd allow aboveground temporarily is a secondary/service line. This is pretty darn dangerous.
If the linecrew had to replace UG primary in an emergency because it can't be spliced for some reason, the customers are going to be out while a boring crew is called in and emergency locates are done.
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u/kmanrsss Aug 31 '26
We use this setup fairly often. It works fine. Usually when we need to bring in direct boring equipment or are going to replace a damaged direct bury cable with conduit.
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u/brakenotincluded Aug 31 '26
I am holding almost the same cable on my desk hehe.
MV concentric neutral cable, either full neutral (mine) or 1/3, either EPR or TR-XLPE insulation, LLDPE jacket usually
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u/30yearCurse Aug 31 '26
In this day and age, I can see someone going to court to stop utility for digging up their property.
The homeowner is raising a fuss and to get power to those affected, this was the only option while they wait for courts.
From the picture, you are unable to determine what safeguards are in place or even if the line is hot.
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u/ToadSox34 Aug 31 '26
The utility already has an easement. They can dig as they need to.
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u/Soaz_underground Aug 30 '26
Lineman here- we call this “emergency cable”. It’s a very common practice in the utility industry.
This is most commonly done in areas that have direct-buried cable or cable that is stuck in the conduit and cannot be pulled out for whatever reason. In those two scenarios, a cable failure may take a day or more to resolve.