Tiddlypom
Carries on creakily
I was thinking of heading to bed last night when I spotted a bright shower of yellow sparks somewhere out in the fields at the back of the house. The power went off for a couple of seconds, and the horses were charging around the field in a tizz. This was when it was nearly dark outside. One of our cctv cameras captured something.
It turns out that it was very fortunate that I saw the sparks rather than just assume it was some random power cut, as that led us to don our wellies, pick up a high powered torch and go out to check the overhead power cables that run over our top hay field. We found two 150m+ long parallel lengths of mains cable lying on the ground
! I believe that the technical description of the cables is that they are part of a 11,000v distribution line. Luckily, the horses don’t have access to that field, but a quick risk assessment reminded us that all the fields have interconnected electric fencing which could conduct any stray electricity around all my paddocks. I very quickly grabbed all three neds in and bunged them in their stables out of harms way. They were rather snorty and were very happy to be put inside. Phew, they said.
We rang Scottish Power and they were brilliant. They immediately cut the power to about a 3 mile length of road either side of us, and sent out two engineers, who then sent for reinforcements. We ended up with at least 5 bods in two 4x4 vehicles plus two other cars here. All with social distancing and us opening up all the gates etc for them, so they didn’t have to touch anything except the mains electricity infrastructure.
It turned out that a Canada goose had crashed into an overhead cable in the next door farmer’s field, but the stress had carried along the cabling running over our field and brought the cables down at a junction. Two teams were needed to repair the damage and replace the cables at either end, and power was restored at about 4.15am, about 6 hours after it was cut off.
The correct trip outs had immediately come into play so that the broken cables were no longer live, but we couldn’t be certain about that when we first saw them. Scottish Power told us they always come out immediately if a cable is on the ground.
Repaired power lines shown this morning. The cables were still up here last night although the goose strike was further behind it in our neighbouring farmer’s field:-
But had snapped at the telegraph pole on the other side of our field here:-
Leaving all this length of cabling lying on the ground:-
Looking forward to a more peaceful evening tonight!
It turns out that it was very fortunate that I saw the sparks rather than just assume it was some random power cut, as that led us to don our wellies, pick up a high powered torch and go out to check the overhead power cables that run over our top hay field. We found two 150m+ long parallel lengths of mains cable lying on the ground
! I believe that the technical description of the cables is that they are part of a 11,000v distribution line. Luckily, the horses don’t have access to that field, but a quick risk assessment reminded us that all the fields have interconnected electric fencing which could conduct any stray electricity around all my paddocks. I very quickly grabbed all three neds in and bunged them in their stables out of harms way. They were rather snorty and were very happy to be put inside. Phew, they said.We rang Scottish Power and they were brilliant. They immediately cut the power to about a 3 mile length of road either side of us, and sent out two engineers, who then sent for reinforcements. We ended up with at least 5 bods in two 4x4 vehicles plus two other cars here. All with social distancing and us opening up all the gates etc for them, so they didn’t have to touch anything except the mains electricity infrastructure.
It turned out that a Canada goose had crashed into an overhead cable in the next door farmer’s field, but the stress had carried along the cabling running over our field and brought the cables down at a junction. Two teams were needed to repair the damage and replace the cables at either end, and power was restored at about 4.15am, about 6 hours after it was cut off.
The correct trip outs had immediately come into play so that the broken cables were no longer live, but we couldn’t be certain about that when we first saw them. Scottish Power told us they always come out immediately if a cable is on the ground.
Repaired power lines shown this morning. The cables were still up here last night although the goose strike was further behind it in our neighbouring farmer’s field:-
But had snapped at the telegraph pole on the other side of our field here:-
Leaving all this length of cabling lying on the ground:-
Looking forward to a more peaceful evening tonight!
