Help me out here folks. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but aren't explosions at power plants a bit unusual? On 2/2/99 the Ford Rogue power plant blew up. On 2/17/99 the Kansas City Power & Light Hawthorne Station Unit #5 blew up. On an e-list somebody claimed there was a blow in CA recently.

Now the transformer fire down in Florida could have just been caused by a geomagnetic storm. Since transformers are now filled with flammable oil and not non-flamable PCBs anymore, more transformer fires are to be expected.

If you have any info or URLs on power plant blows, please let me know. Thank you in advance.

-- Ken Seger (kenseger@earthlink.net), March 04, 1999

Answers

The fire in California was at a Solar Collector near Santa Barbara. It generated electricity by reflecting sunlight onto tubes filled with [mineral] oil.

Anyway, it is a power generator, and it caught on fire & burned. I don't know if it's Y2K related.

As for things that go boom in the night, I've noticed a huge increase in them myself. In addition to your observations, there have been other industrial accidents in Pennsylvania, Washington, Texas, and California (oil refinery).

To my eyes, these seem to be as Deming would put it "Out of control."

Jolly

-- Jollyprez (Jolly@prez.com), March 04, 1999.

But how do plot it on the diagrams for SPC trend analysis - for a process that they claim is already "under control"?

What are the proper guidelines for a "bump in the road"?

What do you measure? Exploding industrial process plants? Flying bodies? Lies per day? Lines per day of coding fixed, slipped, and ignored? Lines per day incorrectly fixed?

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), March 04, 1999.

Hallsville tx. December 98. Main power tranformer fire at Pirkey Power Plant.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), March 04, 1999.

BC, Canada, refinery exploded during a routine matenaince operation. Equipment suspected.

Sources; Senior executive at TCLP, Calgary Hearald.

-- Alison Tieman (fearzone@home.com), March 04, 1999.

2/99 electric plant fire in Buenos Aires left 500,000 people without electricity for several days.

(Maybe we should use this thread as a repository)

-- Chris (catsy@pond.com), March 04, 1999.

Be VERY sure we are not succombing to the "Red Pickup Truck" Sindrome!!!

Chuck

-- Chuck, night driver (rienzoo@en.com), March 05, 1999.

Chuck, that is precisly why I want to make a verified list of failures sorted by type and severity, so that I can compare it to 98, 87, 96, etc.

-- Ken Seger (kenseger@earthlink.net), March 05, 1999.

Jan 1 1999: Milwaukee. Downtown transformer kaplooey. Light out folks. NOT reported in paper next day. Ask Steve!

-- have q's (answer@here.com), March 05, 1999.

Ken, I found an article at Westergarrd about how synchronizing can cause fires and electrical explosions. The article has some graphics so I won't post it, but here's the link. <:)=

Link

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), March 05, 1999.