O. T. Animal Disasters

Mad_Poet

Member
Join Date
Feb 2017
Location
Virginia
Posts
375
Dear Sirs,
Out of curiosity,
what is the smallest animal known to have knocked out an
entire production plant? This morning we had a little snake
get into an electrical power box . . . apparently shorted
some 700 volts to ground and then a power line got burnt
in two.

Snake_a.JPG Head_Snake.JPG
 
there was a snake in West TN several years back that was on the utility pole and got across the phases and knocked out the entire utility company power to the industrial park. big chicken snake, or rather was a big snake.
we had a mouse get into the power on a vibration table and got fried.

Biggest critter was the boss who had no clue how to operate the machine tried to start it without reading the instructions, $40k in damages
james
 
Like Dravik a squirrel -


Got in an electrical substation and blew out the power for an entire area near Detroit.
 
Wasps...


Some species like to make their hives in the heat sink fins of outdoor electronics such as VFDs. We lost a 350HP supply pump VFD once, which caused a series of cascading problems that shut down the entire plant. Turned out that wasps had been using the heat sinks for their nests and completely blocked the air flow, so the VFD tripped on over temp, repeatedly, without the operator finding the problem, so he kept resetting it. Eventually the transistors blew up and in replacing the VFD, we found the wasp nest; the hard way...
 
Ladybird beetles. A whole bunch of them got into an enclosure through a small opening when the temperature started dropping and filled the bottom couple of inches. They eventually shorted out the power. The stench was horrific.
 
Ladybird beetles. A whole bunch of them got into an enclosure through a small opening when the temperature started dropping and filled the bottom couple of inches. They eventually shorted out the power. The stench was horrific.

That's crazy dude, was the bottom of the panel all red?
 
Little black cricket once crawled into an enclosure and found its way through some conduit and junction boxes to an Allen Bradley heavy duty limit switch on an aluminum extrusion press. It got in between the contacts. Wasn’t down for long but for sure surprised me.
 
Did not knock out the plant but a funny story none the less, except for maybe the Opossum.

working on setup and integration of a 3 level storage system with chain driven lifts on each end. The tech for the company that built the unit in Northern Spain was onsite. He had very limited English so we used a lot of hand signals.

He comes up to me with a very serious look, motioning that the lift would not go up. He then blurted out Kitty Cat. I'm sure the look I gave him let him know I had no clue what he was talking about. He then held his hands about 12" apart and again said Kitty Cat then motioned for me to follow. We found a large Opossum had gotten into the chain drive and it was hung up.
 
Ants, millions of ants in a panel. None of the contactors in the panel would make because of the ants.
 
I've seen several squirrels that were lacking of any fur and still smoking from a 12KV experience.

On a personal note - after my dad passed, I received a call from my mom that the well wasn't pumping. I talked her thru turning off the breaker in the garage and then opening the local fused disconnect to see of the fuses were visibly blown. One was, but she also commented that there was a wire hanging out, so I had her wait until I could arrive the next morning. It took me a minute or so to identify the "hanging wire" as a long mouse tail. The rest of the mouse was mostly there too, but not readily recognizable.
 
I've seen mice in cable conduits as well as inside electric panels. Apparently they go searching for the relative warmth in there. Our panels are usually well closed, but clients doing modifications after commissioning sometimes leave room at the cable entry points. The critters always find any available room to make it in there. They like chewing on cables, can do considerable damage. Apparently some cables taste better than others.
 

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