Lightning Arrestor changeout program?

[Lineman North Florida]

The company I work for is currently looking at going to a program where we would change out lightning arrestors on an 8 year cycle, according to engineering Entergy does this and many other company's, I've never heard of any company around us that does it, but that doesn't mean that it's not happening with other companys, in the past we have only changed out arrestors on re-conductor or re-hab jobs and when we find them blown, the work is certainly easy enough just real curious as to how many company's have such a policy.

[reppy007]

The company I work for is currently looking at going to a program where we would change out lightning arrestors on an 8 year cycle, according to engineering Entergy does this and many other company's, I've never heard of any company around us that does it, but that doesn't mean that it's not happening with other companys, in the past we have only changed out arrestors on re-conductor or re-hab jobs and when we find them blown, the work is certainly easy enough just real curious as to how many company's have such a policy.

LNF,thats a new one for me....wont give my opinion,but hell,easy money.Kind of reminds me of a supervisors policy years ago,he had us changing out every transformer that had a current limiter blown feeding it,didnt matter if it was in the easement or not,didnt matter if we all knew a small branch took it out.Finally the lineman got wise and the management too.....If the company goes through with this,Id almost bet it doesnt last too long....sooner or later they will have to look at the cost and decide how many good arrestors they are changing out for, nothing...........good luck :D

[Rob]

We only change out the blown one's!

[bren guzzi]

Only change when blown or refurb ing the whole line. Maybe your lightning arresters are cheap version. ? Never heard of that before.

[lewy]

I have never heard of such a program either. Will you be doing if alive? We never change arresters live. I know they have a pile of arrestors in southern Florida, what a about in your area?

[bluestreak]

About ten years ago was doing infared survey on all the 23kv three phase lines in our district, saw a lot of MOV riser arrestors showing hot. The thought at the time was that after multiple lightning hits the pellets were becoming more of a solid and were getting ready to flash/or blow up. First thought was to replace the arrestors that showed a certain level of heat, then the bean counters got involved saw how many needed to be replaced and we went back to fixing them after they blew up. Never trust an arrestor always use at least a six foot hotstick to install or remove from a hot line!

[Lineman North Florida]

I have never heard of such a program either. Will you be doing if alive? We never change arresters live. I know they have a pile of arrestors in southern Florida, what a about in your area? We will lift the topside with a shotgun and work it dead if it's just an arrestor station, if it's a transformer or urd riser we will mack it out open the jack lift the topside so we will not be handling the arrestors energized. As far as how many arrestors? Every third pole is an arrestor station except when you get uptown then it's virtually every pole, as there is either a transformer bank, 3 phase urd riser cap bank etc, etc, so there are quite a few arrestors. The only reason that I'm curious is because a new guy came in from Entergy and said he had never worked anywhere that did'nt have such a program, kinda like we were way behind times, my take was I had never heard of anyplace that had such a program and this is about as good a place as there is to find out about other company's policy's, I was hoping Poot might be able to shed some light or talk to some of his old co-workers as I'm pretty sure he retired from Entergy.

[Old Line Dog]

We only change out the blown one's!

Yup. I'm with Rob. Ya change out the blown ones.

Never heard of a program like that.
Any company that does that must have Lots of money....that could be used for a Heck of a lot better uses. I would think.

[Old Line Dog]

We will lift the topside with a shotgun and work it dead if it's just an arrestor station, if it's a transformer or urd riser we will mack it out open the jack lift the topside so we will not be handling the arrestors energized.

Do you Glove where you work LNF? Just curious.
Most times, most arrestors I've seen blown, the whole bottom side is gone. Ya just gotta look for where the Ground wire finally laid up.

In either case...yeah, just Mack it out, cover up and just replace it.

[T-Man]

Just before I retired three- four years ago there was a new policy to install HVLAS every five spans or so. An incredible amount of LAS, it was to reduce outages caused by lightening so customers would have better service. This was more apt to be done in rural areas where the lines were more likely to take a strike. They were on transformers, risers and then on straight line poles just a few spans away. I saw this in another utility on our border and it started showing up on ours. I asked an engineer and he said it was for better dependability. So going out to a feeder and changing them out every so often is not so far fetched, but certainty busy work. Not cheap either.

[Lineman North Florida]

Do you Glove where you work LNF? Just curious.
Most times, most arrestors I've seen blown, the whole bottom side is gone. Ya just gotta look for where the Ground wire finally laid up.

In either case...yeah, just Mack it out, cover up and just replace it. Yeah we glove, it's just against our safety rules to tap up or remove a lightning arrestor energized.

[lewy]

Yeah we glove, it's just against our safety rules to tap up or remove a lightning arrestor energized.

We like most places have arrestors at all of our transformers and risers and such and they would also like to start putting them at the normal opens as well, but we are nothing like what I see riding through southern Florida where they seem to be at every pole. It might be a good idea to have a program to change them, but I would think it would be way down on the priority list, I know it would be up here with all of the other work we have.

[Lineman North Florida]

Thanks's for all the information, still don't know about Entergy, but ya'll pretty much told me what I suspected. Charlie.

[Pootnaigle]

Umm Entergy doesnt have a program to change em out they are too cheep for that they do however have one serviceman doing what they call reliability work n he often charges em on his time sheet fer changin out cutouts n arrestors all day while he sits on his dead behind n does whatever he does

[Lineman North Florida]

Umm Entergy doesnt have a program to change em out they are too cheep for that they do however have one serviceman doing what they call reliability work n he often charges em on his time sheet fer changin out cutouts n arrestors all day while he sits on his dead behind n does whatever he does Thank's Poot, I kinda suspected that all along, appreciate the info.