Explosion at the Hoover Dam - God DAM it

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AnonymousKot said:
Soo... is the transformer gonna get repaired/replaced or is the dam fucked
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Why wouldn't they replace it? One busted transformer shouldn't even be enough to keep plant offline while they're repairing it (there's generally redundancy built into these systems). The explosion and fire didn't happen near anything structurally important to the dam and there's no indication of any structural compromise.

It's also worth noting the Hoover Dam "only" produces about 700MW when running at full power. These days it doesn't even provide all of the Vegas valley's power anymore (the rest is drawn from the rest of the grid (and a pittance generated locally by solar panels) not because of any technical limitation, but simply because the valley needs more than its maximum output). Even if the dam goes offline entirely there shouldn't be any major impact to customers. It'll put more strain on the grid for sure but there's additional capacity that can spin up to cover a shortfall pretty quickly.
 
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It was on the east shore (so in Arizona), so this explosion/fire may be the most exciting disaster to happen in AZ in a while…
 
Übertroon said:
It's just a transformer. But it says something about the poor the state of the current infrastructure, and it seems third worldish to have old transformers blowing up because of shitty maintenance, and too high of a power demand on old power plants.

Arizoma and the west coast is so close to rolling blackouts and energy rationing. 45 degrees Celsius and no air conditioning must be a hoot
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Even with good maintenance transformers can still sometimes fail catastrophically. Could've been a metallurgical flaw in the core or the windings or a manufacturing flaw in the insulating layer, just waiting until juuuuust the right conditions to cause a short.

A long time ago I used to work in a datacenter and we had just installed a brand new whole-room UPS unit, which had a manufacturing flaw in the windings of the main transformer, which caused a short and the whole thing burst into flames. It was pretty wild.
 
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Meat Target said:
What about the fires in Flagstaff or that giant school brawl in Tucson?
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Fires, despite being in the desert and a (relative) lack of stuff to burn, are quite common in AZ and happen every year (when I lived in AZ, I wanted to visit Biosphere 2 but nearby brush fires were constantly closing it down). The Flagstaff ones happened to be near where a lot of people live. Don’t know much about the Tucson school brawl, but it isn’t on the news outside the state so it’s not a mass shooter I’m guessing.

Major infrastructure blowing up? Now that’s interesting. Either the myriad of dams acting fucky or the Palo Verde nuclear plant melting down would make patrolling the Sonoran desert feel more like patrolling the Mohave if you catch my drift.
 
Male Idiot said:
Propably too many diversity hires and too little renovation.

Old equipment and incompetent polotical hires often end up with a boom.
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That's been an issue I've been looking into recently. A lot of people are completly unaware to the real "happening" around the corner as American infrastructure continues collapse with no one around able to repair, refit or remake that infrastructure. Lots of food facility fires, city water and electrical plants and old transport shit like rail ways and bridges falling apart slowly and quietly with few noticing as we struggle to fix shit.
 
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Transformers exploding aren’t necessarily a symptom of poor maintenance. Sometimes they just blow up. Sometimes there’s a spike in the load and it’s enough to pop them. Yes, there is preventative measures that can reduce their failures, but nothing’s full proof. It’s also not a big deal to replace them. They are very common and often redundantly installed.
 
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