Over the past several months I've received several letters from power
company employees as well as ham radio operators asking about the
justification for a full time RFI investigator. When I hear this it reminds
me of a particular RFI investigation I was involved with. I think this sums
it up pretty well. If anyone has a response to this story please respond
here so we all get the benefit of your opinion. Your opinion is educational
whether we agree or not.
About 10 years ago I received a call from a ham concerning a power line
noise or at least what he thought was RFI caused by a power line noise
source. His power company had been responding fairly well to his complaints
or power line noise, but recently had been showing more resistance and less
interest in assisting. After several attempts to contact the power company
and a couple letters he received a response. The response explained that due
to the recent reduction in the work force a new prioritization method had
been implemented and that RFI complaints were seen as a nuisance and quite
low on the list. RFI complaints would now been taken care of during slow
periods and at times when inclement weather kept them from taking care of
other problems.
The customer/Ham called and asked if he could hire me to locate his source
interference.
I arrived the following week and found his RFI to be caused by power company
equipment. At the time I didn't have equipment that would allow me the
convenience of locating the exact source on the pole. However, I located the
pole containing the source and made a note for the power company " Beware, I
don't think this source is the typical loose hardware problem. Tell the
linemen to visually inspect the pole for early stages of catastrophic
failure".
The agreement I had with the customer was, If I found it he would forward
the information to the power company and they would in turn make the
suggested repairs.
Almost a year later at about 11:30pm, I received a call from this Ham. It
seems the problem, just a nuisance, had not been repaired. The source turned
out to be a burnt and broken line on top of an insulator. It had been arcing
all this time and finally opened up.
It gets worse.
The hot side of the line fell down on the secondary and sent 7,200 volts
into a house and set it on fire. Use your imagination for the rest of the
details
It costs a power company about $700.00 a day to have one man correcting
these problems, plus hardware. That can get very expensive. Now you multiply
that times the number of complaints they work on that was located and didn't
correct the real problem. This equals more than you would come close to
guessing.
Power companies are partially correct in when they say RFI complaints are a
nuisance. However, it only takes locating one source that isn't a nuisance
and is about to burn open and fall to the ground to justify the expense.
It's a shame they don't keep records to show how many are found to be the
early stages of a catastrophic failure.
All power line noise sources are the result of a spark. Should we assume
they are all a nuisance? Knowing the potential? It only takes preventing one
burnt line from falling to justify an RFI Locator on the job full time.
Mike Martin
RFI Services
6469 Old Solomons Island RD
Tracy's Landing MD 20779
301-855-5961 Tel
410-741-5153 Fax
21*29180 Nextel
mike@rfiservices.info
www.rfiservices.info
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