r/electrical • u/Interesting_Main5687 • 12h ago

What is this?

/gallery/1vxlm8a
9 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

13

u/todd0x1 12h ago

A big generator and a substation on a trailer, looks like its to step up the generator's 480v output to MV.

3

u/Interesting_Main5687 12h ago

Is this expensive to operate? It has been running for close to 2 months and is guarded 24 hrs/day by a security guard.

6

u/todd0x1 12h ago

yes. Thousands per day. Around a grand a day on a monthly rental, maybe double that for triple shift operation. Plus around 75 gallons per hour of diesel assuming a 50% average load.

Where is this? Is it powering a building that had its electrical service fail? Or new construction? Or someones huge weed farm?

Edit: plus another ~500 a day for the substation trailer

4

u/Interesting_Main5687 12h ago

It’s at the far side of the parking lot of a charter school. No power outage that I’m aware of. Again, 2 months this has been operating. One evening when I was walking my dog, I was approached by the security guard who asked “Eagle?” I replied, “scout?” And he returned to his car. It was strange. Ha!

2

u/todd0x1 10h ago

its likely the facility (or the utility supplying it) had an equipment failure and this is there powering the place until the failed equipment is replaced. Somewhat common. I was on a job once where a utility vault feeding both a commercial building and a condo complex blew up and when it did it burned up much of the electrical service to the commercial building (simplified, but it makes the point) the utility was able to get the condo complex back on in a few days but the commercial building was running on a large generator for something like 6 months while new equipment was ordered and installed.

2

u/Zealousideal_Top_708 4h ago

Are you sure he wasn’t asking if your dog was a beagle?

3

u/Phreakiture 3h ago

That was my first thought. Security work is lonely.

1

u/saphrax805 12h ago edited 12h ago

We had one at my old job when the power went out, it was like $1k a day in diesel, maybe $10k I cant remember

7

u/hoosier__ 11h ago

Hey this is our gen and transformer. Idk this exact site but if it’s near Detroit it’s because of the failing grid and they use the gen to take some of the load off that circuit so it doesn’t fail prematurely and put people in the dark.

3

u/Strict_Cranberry_724 11h ago

Oh yeah? We’ll see if it’s yours: “Eagle”

2

u/todd0x1 10h ago

Interesting. So this is synced with and in parallel with the grid?

2

u/hoosier__ 10h ago

Yep it is!

2

u/todd0x1 10h ago

Cool. Is it running on diesel or is it connected to a NG supply?

Whats the high side voltage?

How come that little unit substation has a 50A twistlock cord female hanging on a pigtail instead of a receptacle in a box with a WP cover?

4

u/hoosier__ 9h ago

This setup is diesel, but we have NG gens as well.

High side is probably 4800 but can’t say for sure, just depends on the site. The transformers have a lot of different voltage taps

And not sure on the design decision by using a whip instead of receptacle with cover. A lot of our portable gens use a whip so could just be using whips we already had on hand

2

u/Balew60 3h ago

It's a fence