caused by a cow. We had a long distribution primary that served a farm, and one of the guyed structures was in a cow pasture. The cows discovered the guy wire made a really good back scratcher. And, over time, they had stretched the guy wire to where the pole would pull back toward them while they were scratching and then pop forward when they walked out. Well, that caused the wires to shake and sometimes brought the primary and neutral together, followed by the branch fuse operating—and then a call from a very irritated farmer.
We looked at several options, the most tongue-in-cheek being installing an insulator on the guy anchor end and bonding the guy wire to the primary. While creative, we figured it would be a bit of a liability issue and the cow might actually like it and climb under the wire more often. We settled for a far more mundane solution of tightening everything and then installing some short pole segments under the guy wires to prevent the cows from getting under them.
But, my favorite field story involves me. I was a brand new engineer and was sent to stake a pole. (That is were we put a small stake into the ground that eventually grows to be a pole, or, when that fails, a line crew comes out and replaces it with a pole.) Being brand new, I lacked a staking hammer and was told to go to the hardware store and purchase one. So I went to the local hardware store, got a rubber mallet, and headed to the field. Well the first blow from the mallet rebounded into my hard hat. So, after collecting my hat and glasses I decided that it must be me. So, I struck a harder blow. When I again recovered my hat, glasses (and wits) again, I returned to the store and bought a 5-pound sledge hammer.
as opposed to an investor-owned utility? Advantages? Disadvantages? AS: Well this is hard to answer, I’ve only worked for one public power company and one investor-owned utility, so my experience is limited. I know that in general the public power company advantages are greater job security and greater focus on service, reliability and direct responsibility to the customers. However, on the down side, you sometimes become involved in city politics, everything you do or say can end up in the newspaper, and the business travel expenses policies are more restrictive.
Now in particular to OUC, there are several advantages over the investor-owned company I worked for. The first—and as a computer geek the closest to my heart—is the excellent IT group we have. Their first priority is getting us the tools we need to do our job, rather then standardizing everything to make their jobs easier. The second is the focus on education and development for their personnel. At OUC, it is very common for engineers to regularly attend professional conferences and courses. Another advantage is that in the last year I have not heard the words “re-organization” or “labor reduction.” It is very refreshing to know that if you focus on your job, your job will be there. As far as disadvantages, I’m still trying to find one.
UAE: Is there one piece of equipment that drives you absolutely crazy, that you wish you could call the manufacturer and tell them how to fix it? If so, how could it be improved?
AS: The software we use for load flow
and stability studies is the item that
gives us the most trouble. It was created
decades ago and has grown over the years
from a software package that was run on
mainframes via punch cards to today’s
version that has a graphical interface and
runs on laptops, desktops and servers.
The programs are not a cohesive whole,
but a collection of packages, options,
add-ons and user-written macros.
Whenever there is an update to one
part of the package—and sometimes
when there isn’t—other parts of the
package will quit working, behave
strangely or just disappear. Half the
challenge of this job is learning to
use the tools. Basically it’s similar to
Microsoft Windows: There is a half
dozen ways to do anything and at any
given time, some of them might not
be working.
But, in the software companies’
defense, it is a small and very diverse
market they are serving. There are
users who still like the command line,
those who use the graphical interface,
and those who write code in a dozen
different languages to batch execute the
software package. The software packages
are run on several different platforms
and with an assorted variety of licens-
ing schemes. So, given the market, I
would say they do a good job balancing
the needs of these market segments and
keeping the program reasonably priced.
In the end, you get what you pay for,
and while an easy to use cohesive package
would be great, I’m not sure we could
afford it.
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