We Lost a 120V Leg

[engineer2]

Was getting ready in the morning and the power suddenly shut off. Upon further investigation I found half our power was out; every other breaker. We lost one 120 VAC leg. Called the power company and they said I didn't know what I was talking about, it must be breakers in our house. After some convincing, they sent a crew out. They confirmed an underground line had gone bad. They connected a temporary isolation transformer to make up for the lost leg. Interesting that they had a ready-made device for that. We'll find out next week where the digging will be.

 

[nadogail]

Funny how they always try to dodge responsibility for their lines and equipment.

 

[sparky 1971]

It happens fairly often. In the last five or six years I've gone on at least four service calls for partial power only to find the POCO's underground had gone bad.

 

[kbuhagiar]

My old neighborhood was all underground, fed by old (1950s) lead cables. Losing one 120 leg was practically a monthly occurrence until they finally replaced everything in 2010.

 

[tdkkart]

Hard to convince them, I came home in the middle of winter at 2am to find a missing neutral, had to call the sherrifs department
to get an emergency number for the power company and demanded a call back. Once I explained to them that my voltages were swinging from 60v to 160v they sent a couple guys out. Ended up with a temporary neutral strong around my house for the rest of the winter.

 

[wyliesdiesels]

Was getting ready in the morning and the power suddenly shut off. Upon further investigation I found half our power was out; every other breaker. We lost one 120 VAC leg. Called the power company and they said I didn't know what I was talking about, it must be breakers in our house. After some convincing, they sent a crew out. They confirmed an underground line had gone bad. They connected a temporary isolation transformer to make up for the lost leg. Interesting that they had a ready-made device for that. We'll find out next week where the digging will be.

you should ask to speak to that person again and throw it back at them. "you dont know what YOU'RE talking about. The crew found a dead leg..."

 

[Bert_]

With the power companies that have a call center instead of letting you talk to the local office you're better off just playing dumb. Say you don't have any power or all the lights are flashing. Don't get technical.

 

[engineer2]

With the power companies that have a call center instead of letting you talk to the local office you're better off just playing dumb.

Very true. When my dad had the neutral line come off at the pole behind the house, he called and gave them the engineering explanation of what it was doing to the power in the house. Nobody ever came out. I told him to call again and simply tell them "there is a loose wire hanging off the pole". They were out to fix it in 2 hours.

In my case the dead leg killed the power to the smart meter. Once they realized we were getting free electricity, it suddenly became urgent and 3 trucks showed up.

Any of you sparkies know why my little 3-light outlet tester now shows open ground on every outlet in the house? The grounding rod looks undisturbed. We are all EMT. Is it something to do with the temporary transformer? They didn't connect its green cable to our grounding rod.

 

[yeldogt]

I like when you call about the main being down -- tell them it's dancing around in the street. Twice they told me it was impossible ....

Now I just call the police ..

 

[rlitman]

...In my case the dead leg killed the power to the smart meter. Once they realized we were getting free electricity, it suddenly became urgent and 3 trucks showed up.

Any of you sparkies know why my little 3-light outlet tester now shows open ground on every outlet in the house? The grounding rod looks undisturbed. We are all EMT. Is it something to do with the temporary transformer? They didn't connect its green cable to our grounding rod.

I had a co-worker with the same issue as you. They ran her house on one of those transformers for a week before they could finish the underground repair. However, the transformer cart didn't have a meter on it, so that week was free.

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Your neutral is probably floating a little from ground, because of the way the autotransformer is producing the extra leg from L-N. That could explain the weird grounding issue you see. I suspect that on the half of the stuff that still had power, it might show good ground.

 

[klassenl]

With the power companies that have a call center instead of letting you talk to the local office you're better off just playing dumb. Say you don't have any power or all the lights are flashing. Don't get technical.

Around here the call center is very good. However, being a relatively small center I have the personal numbers to some of the guys so if I need an answer quick I call them direct.

 

[rharman]

We lost a neutral once a few years ago. Connection on a pole out in front of our house came loose - must have rotted away. Things started flickering.

Called Edison and they were out lickety-split. Did a quick visual of the lines around us and saw it right away. New clamp and we're good-to-go. Maybe 2 hours total.

 

[Meursault74]

Happened at my brother's house. Half of his house didn't have electricity. Called the power company. The worker took the one good leg and distributed it to his entire breaker bank so he could have electricity in the entire house. The problem was at the pole and that took a little more time to fix. He said don't run too many appliances at once until this is fixed. I think it was resolved the next day.

 

[Jagmandave]

I lost one leg at my house, called the POCO and they had someone out within the hour. Turned out the connector under the meter had failed. He was able to fix it and it's been fine since. It had to do with the aluminum wire used from the pole to the house.....it had oxidized and worked loose.

 

[wyliesdiesels]

Very true. When my dad had the neutral line come off at the pole behind the house, he called and gave them the engineering explanation of what it was doing to the power in the house. Nobody ever came out. I told him to call again and simply tell them "there is a loose wire hanging off the pole". They were out to fix it in 2 hours.

In my case the dead leg killed the power to the smart meter. Once they realized we were getting free electricity, it suddenly became urgent and 3 trucks showed up.

Any of you sparkies know why my little 3-light outlet tester now shows open ground on every outlet in the house? The grounding rod looks undisturbed. We are all EMT. Is it something to do with the temporary transformer? They didn't connect its green cable to our grounding rod.

A grounding rod has nothing to do with the EGC on an outlet. A grounding rod is for shunting lightning, limiting potential to earth and shunting high voltage primary electricity when those lines come into contact with secondary lines. you can disconnect the ground rod from your panel and your EGCs on your outlets will still function properly because they rely on the neutral bonding in your main service panel.

the ground light on your tester connects ground to hot. If the neutral to ground bond in the main service panel is not connected properly, then you dont have a return path for the current on the ground pin on the outlet.

 

[engineer2]

Thank you for the explanation. I always thought of it as a redundant ground.
Our house has one grounding rod. I wonder if there is any benefit to adding a second. Easy enough to do.

About a month before all this happened we had a fairly close lightning strike. A couple of our QO breaker were "partially tripped" where half the orange was showing. Resetting it fixed it and I didn't think anything of it. I suppose I should pull the panel cover off and inspect.

It'll be interesting to see how they fix the underground line. I saw a local company that says they usually bore and pull.

 

[HeadsUp]

Reminds me of a incident with my neighbor while living in a condo building. He came over asking if we had heat late in December of 2002. Like you he lost one of the 110VAC legs. He called the PoCo. They took off the meter head and said all was OK and left. One of the under ground aluminum wires broke between the meter located at the far end of the building and the panel in his basement. The condo associations solution... many portable heaters until they ran 4" conduit on the front of the building.

 

[finn]

Happened to my mom’s old condo near the ocean in Florida.

it was a circa 1970 ish condo, with the meters centrally located on an outside panel. The municipality owned power company came out promptly after I called and told them it seemed to be the outside panel. They made a temporary fix, but, in the end the whole bank of meters had to be replaced.

Not sure who paid, the city or the association, as we sold not too long after in “incident “.

 

[Citation]

Happened to me a few months back. Lights went out in the room I was in and I heard the AC shut off. So I went to the other side of the house and was confused to see the lights on. I was really concerned at that point and it took me a bit to realize what was probably happening. Then I went outside and observed the burning wires on the power pole. Well that cleared it up!

 

[reader2580]

The utility company probably gets a ton of calls about dead legs that are on the customer side so after a while they start to assume every dead leg is a customer side problem. Not a whole lot different than tech support for just about anything electric asking if the device is plugged in as the very first question if it appears dead. Many people find the question insulting, but a lot of issues are fixed by plugging something in.

My parents lost a leg on an underground supply one year. The power company ran a feed across the ground from the neighbor's meter base to their meter base. It was months before the feed was replaced due to this happening right after the ground froze.

 

[Diesel Dan]

We lost a 120 leg once.
Meter socket leg disintegrated. It was a old home had three meters stacked vertically. Bottom two were capped with plastic plugs but still intact and hot. So I pulled parts from a good socket and installed into the bad one. At 1AM with a flash light while it was hot. Good times.

 

[roblouvasz]

Happened at my brother's house. Half of his house didn't have electricity. Called the power company. The worker took the one good leg and distributed it to his entire breaker bank so he could have electricity in the entire house. The problem was at the pole and that took a little more time to fix. He said don't run too many appliances at once until this is fixed. I think it was resolved the next day.

Happened at my brother's house. Half of his house didn't have electricity. Called the power company. The worker took the one good leg and distributed it to his entire breaker bank so he could have electricity in the entire house. The problem was at the pole and that took a little more time to fix. He said don't run too many appliances at once until this is fixed. I think it was resolved the next day.

What happens if he had anything that ran off of 220v?

 

[Captain Spaulding]

The utility company probably gets a ton of calls about dead legs that are on the customer side so after a while they start to assume every dead leg is a customer side problem. Not a whole lot different than tech support for just about anything electric asking if the device is plugged in as the very first question if it appears dead. Many people find the question insulting, but a lot of issues are fixed by plugging something in.

My parents lost a leg on an underground supply one year. The power company ran a feed across the ground from the neighbor's meter base to their meter base. It was months before the feed was replaced due to this happening right after the ground froze.

Most such problems are going to be in the customers equipment because the 120/240V system doesn’t exist except from transformer to user, and most of the likely failure points are after the meter, so it’s easy to understand.

 

[four.cycle]

hey wait a minute....

you sure it wasn't 110 or 115 ??

 

[Meursault74]

What happens if he had anything that ran off of 220v?

It wouldn't operate until both legs are operational.
I think something in his Jacuzzi runs of 240V, but that isn't vital and he was only on the one leg for about a day.

 

[engineer2]

the ground light on your tester connects ground to hot. If the neutral to ground bond in the main service panel is not connected properly, then you dont have a return path for the current on the ground pin on the outlet.

Turns out the outlet tester was bad. It's an old Radio Shack model from the 80's. It will be retired.

 

[Metal-Marc]

hey wait a minute....

you sure it wasn't 110 or 115 ??

117V