Power line fireballs

[8ntruck 6,991]

On GMA this morning, there was a video clip of power lines in Texas that had fireballs reveling along the wires between the power poles.  Kind of like a Jacob's Ladder.

 

I've got to ask a dumb mechanical engineer's question to the sparkly types out there : what would cause that to happen?

[WHX?? 48,794]

Saw that too ...... @oliver2-44 trying to start all of his horses in cold weather with a jump pak that was plugged into 460 VAC. 

 

Seriously guessing that it was icing on the lines that was frying off lines that had marginal or no insulation. Couple that with overloading on the lines with mother nature throwing a ringer. 

 

Still unbelievable for a southern state.... how's the salt on them roads down ther Jim? 

[oliver2-44 9,697]

@WHX24 no salt only sand on the bridges. However the large grocery store JD salt across their entry sidewalks.  Between the rolling multi hour brown outs I’ve had many quick trips where a power line breaker or switch has tripped and immediately reclined because the fault blew the problem clear. Today the news said about 4 million people didn’t have over due to outages and rolling brownouts. 

Edited February 17, 2021 by oliver2-44

[elcamino/wheelhorse 9,296]

@WHX24 i live in the northern southern state. Fire balls prevented by under ground power lines. he he  The power company finally buried my sub  division's power lines when the checked the records for 5 years and found they made more visits to us than anywhere close to us. Power company is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Last year dumb and dumber were leaning against the pole in my brother's yard ( the one with overhead lines going to his house ) he was told all 200 houses had their lines buried . He took them on a tour and they figured out their map was wrong - wrong sub division. 

Edited February 17, 2021 by elcamino/wheelhorse

[JoeM 7,871]

High resistance, plasma arc is my guess. As far as traveling down the line. remember electricity always wants to go back home. (source) I figure the arc is not pulling enough current to trip the breaker and keeps on keeps on. 

This is similar to what happens when a low grade extension cord is melted and starts to arc like a welder. Fire. One of the reason arc fault breakers are required for bedrooms and such. Those breakers "listen" to the circuit and trip when an arc is detected. That is why there are nuisance trips when using a device, on one of these circuits, that had brushes arcing or contactor arcing.