Ring!

So, I'm on call from the 22nd until somewhere around the 4th. One REC had to have surgery, the other is on vacation and for two days, the last Ohio REC is in Maryland to play golf.

It hasn't been too bad so far. Had one station spill where 265 gallons of mineral oil was pumped onto the ground when a valve snapped. A couple of other minor calls. It just takes a bit of adjustment to how I live. I have to always have the stupid phone and a bunch of important numbers with me. Sometimes I'm good at that, other times I forget. Mia and I went to the grocery store tonight and as soon as I walked in I got a call. I didn't have a pen or any of the numbers I needed, so we got back into the car and ran home. That was annoying. I also discovered that I can't hear the phone ring while wearing headphones and listening to music. Thank goodness for office mates who noticed that I was not answering my annoying phone and poked me.

We'll see how the rest of it goes. Hopefully it will be uneventful.

Pothole

This picture (which is super small for some reason) came from the archives at work. It is a horse car that operated in the city of Columbus during 1892. It was replaced by the electric trolley which was powered by Columbus Southern which became part of AEP. I'm amused at the really awful road conditions of West Broad, and especially the destinations (asylums and cemeteries).

How Many

How many workplace services employees does it take to change a light bulb? None. It can't be done.

Here's an example of how absurd our world has become.

We have a fluorescent light bulb that is blinking in our office. We let the workplaces services guys know, and they have come to assess the situation, twice. They are concerned that part of the light fixture is over a section of cubical. Thereby prohibiting the safe use of a ladder. This means that they would need to build a scaffold to span over the 5' 5" tall cubicle wall. If they build a scaffolding to clear the cubical, they would be at 6' above the ground. Once you are 6' or higher, our safety policy states that you must be tied off in the event that you fall. If you tie off, it must be to something that can hold 4,000 pounds so you don't break whatever you've tied off to and plummet to your death. Since this is just a normal office, drop ceiling, nothing can be used for the tie off. Therefore, the light bulb cannot be changed or even removed to stop the flickering.

Our concern for safety has effectively made changing a light bulb a life risking procedure that is prohibited by the company. Next, I will be forced to roll around in a bubble to keep from hurting myself.

Doh!

I was called out on a spill involving 3 poles and 7 transformers today. If you look closely at the truck you can see that he took out a drop line which then brought down the poles.


The owner of this car should consider themselves to be pretty lucky. I am very amused by the safety slogan on the truck. Might want to consider changing it to look around before driving. See the oil on the pavement from the transformers?

A shot of the alley and 2 of the downed poles. All the water in the alley also had transformer oil in it.

3 transformers surrounded by oil dry.

Putting out 2 plus skids of oil dry. This will then be brushed around by a skid driver with a broom.

It was really stinkin' cold out there and the poor line guys will be out until late this evening resetting three poles, hanging 7 transformers, and all the other utility lines before they get to go home.

Warm and Toasty

When I'm walking downtown, I always avoid walking over those big grates in the sidewalk. People have made fun of me for this, but I have recently been vindicated.

Those big grates are frequently covering what we call vaults. These are underground rooms that house electrical equipment. Ever notice how you don't see great big transformers laying around most cities? That's because they are underneath you. Working in the underground network is challenging and of course dangerous. The vaults can fill up with poisonous gas and the air has to be constantly monitored, the vaults themselves are confined spaces and you have to have special training before you can go into them, they fill up with all sorts of gross things (storm water, trash, drug paraphernalia, and in one area we have a vault that fills up with infectious waste from the hospital!), room to maneuver is very limited, it's really stinking hot in there, some of them are very deep, and if something goes wrong you're going to be toast because you can't get away.

We had something go wrong with one of our vaults. Really wrong. The kinda wrong that involves a ball of fire shooting up out of the vault, launching the grate and taking out a huge chunk of downtown Columbus including the arena district, convention center, all the nationwide buildings and hotels. We were lucky that nobody was walking by at that moment.

Apparently one transformer caught on fire and exploded taking 3 others with it. It was so hot that the fire department wouldn't authorize anyone entering the vault for over 24 hours until the temperature dropped.

We had to call the spill into the national spill reporting center (NRC) since we lost more than 25 gallons of oil. This is not an unusual thing for us to have to do, however we did learn something new. Do not use the words explode, exploded, or explosion when reporting spills. The NRC is apparently required to notify the FBI when you use one of those words and then they call us to chat. Nobody wants that.

So, stay away from those grates people!

Drill Baby, Drill!

I had some adventures this week. Remember back to the scary place I had to do some work in? Well, I have to do more. Friday, my buddy Bryan and I drilled 32 holes in concrete for PCB core samples. It was a blast. You can see part of the grid we set up in the picture below. Every 10 foot we drilled through a paper plate to a depth of 3 inches, and collected the dust for analysis.

Had to take the picture of Bryan working. I'm not so excited at the amount of dust flying through the air, especially since we're testing for PCBs in that dust!

On Wednesday I took a nice drive through Morgan County to do a station update. I passed Lock #8 on the Muskingum River on my drive to the station and decided to stop on my way back.

I was creeped out by the complete lack of safety devices to keep me from doing something stupid. For instance, there was nothing to keep me from walking across that rickety walkway over the gate but a very worn sign that said employees only. I even discovered that I could operate the gates on the lock!

Again with the lack of safety features. I'm standing on the edge of the lock looking down 26 feet. That's what the depth marker on the wall told me.

Tingly

I often forget how dangerous our jobs working for an electric utility can be, which is never a good thing. But I get frequent reminders which help keep me on my toes. Especially when I think about those whose jobs are way more dangerous than mine on a regular basis.

There is a small percentage of linemen who are rock gods. They are linemen who have been approved to "work bare hand". If you've ever seen a lineman working on a line, he most likely was seriously suited up in personal protective equipment (PPE), a hard hat, safety glasses, gloves, fire retardant shirt, and insulated gloves over all of that. The bare hand guys are doing exactly what their titles says they are doing, grabbing on to live lines with their bare hands. Usually transmission lines, which carry enough voltage to not only kill you, but also not leave much to identify you. These guys fascinate me. I asked one of them what it was like. His reply, "Like holding a lightening bolt". Then I asked him if he felt anything, "Yeah, it's like a million little bugs crawling on your skin. All tingly." I'm pretty sure these men are insane.

I've got a super safe job in comparison. But still, I do enter into stations with lots of powerful equipment. The most powerful stations, right outside of power plants actually make me feel weird when I'm near them. There are different levels of access inside stations. Those who are not trained and are being escorted in, must stay a certain distance away, or in fancy speak maintain the required approach destance, from the equipment, depending on its voltage. I'm considered trained and can enter stations all alone and walk up to a station class transformer, hug it and kiss it, if I wanted.

Most of the dangers I face in a station can be prevented as long as I'm alert. In fact, I can safely touch most of the equipment since the outside is not energized. That's not true of everything though, and in general I don't touch. I worry mostly about tripping and falling onto something that is energized. We are trained, although I don't know if it would happen if I needed it to, that if we are falling not to reach out to grab anything. The idea being if we hit something that is energized, we will get voltage but should fall off. If we reach out and grab it, our muscles will tighten and we won't be able to let go, most likely resulting in our death. I also have to worry about lines that are down, holes, lines that are in the ground, and wasps. They LOVE electrical equipment.

We do have a ground grid that runs the entire station, meant to ground any loose electricity. It also keeps the fence from becoming energized. The grid is made of copper and is a popular item to steal. I don't find that amusing since my life depends on it being there. We are trained to look to make sure the grounds are on the fence gate before we touch it, but still. I know one guy who was getting ready to open a gate, key in hand, when a noise caught his attention. It was the rain hitting the fence and vaporizing. Some stooge had stolen the grounds.

Yesterday, I was in an old distribution station. The distribution stations don't have as much voltage in them, but it's still enough to kill you. I had walked up to one of the big station class transformers to get its serial number and noticed the ground was vibrating. Not unusual. Then I realized that it was more than that, my body was vibrating and my hands and feet were tingly....a bit like a million bugs crawling on them. I had a moment of panic when it dawned on me that I was receiving an unknown amount of voltage. I am pretty proud of myself for just standing there for a few long seconds. I obviously was not getting hurt at that moment, but if I did something stupid and touched something that made me a better ground than the grid, it was not going to be good. So, I assessed the situation, tingling away. Realized it was okay to back away and slowly did so. It took awhile for the unpleasant sensation in my hands and feet to go away, but I was fine.

Makes me pretty glad that I always take the time to hug and kiss everyone each morning before leaving for work.

Fremont!

I had to drive to the Fremont area (close enough to Toledo to warrant a shout out to loyal reader, Chris' Mom!) today to conduct a vendor audit for a used oil transporter and transfer facility. This time I snagged a Toyota Prius from the rental company. I know that this is not exciting to some of you, especially those who own one (Katy), but considering I've spent 5 minutes in any kind of hybrid vehicle and have never driven one, it was pretty exciting for me!

It was exciting for about 10 minutes.....

First, this car is just one great big blind spot. Thankfully the mirrors are located in a way that you can see behind you because looking over your shoulder will get you nothing. The rear window has a solid piece of car going right across the middle which annoyed me to no end. The windshield is unobstructed, but it's weird how they've set up the control panel and it made me have a bit of a weird optical illusion thing going on, which I eventually adjusted to.

Second, they've tried to gizmo the vehicle to no end. There's a little computer thing that displays your gas usage, mileage and how much electricity you've generated. Kinda neat but distracting for awhile. It was also the thing that controlled the radio and temperature. When I wanted to change radio stations the blasted thing was not withing comfortable reaching length. Could be a short person problem, not necessarily the car's fault.

Third, it drives weird. Fortunately, the car tells you when it is on because you wouldn't know it otherwise. It's all silent and absent of vibrations. This also happens at stop lights which I found to be really distressing. I found that if you turned the radio up loud enough, the car would vibrate and I wouldn't notice the lack of engine vibration :) The car feels really heavy. It actually handled pretty well, but I was always surprised when it did just because it felt like a tank.

The breaks are also strange. They feel all grindy and if that was going on in my car, I would think I needed new breaks. I'm assuming it has to do with the electricity generating mechanisms.

But by far the most annoying thing was the shifting between electric and gas. There was a noticeable hesitation at times when trying to accelerate and the car was trying to shift over to gas. This panicked me once when trying to punch it to beat a car at an intersection. It was also a bit distressing to take your foot off to coast a little when driving and then re-applying the gas. If it was a long enough time period it would switch over to electric and then back to gas and it would feel like the car was shifting. It gave me the impression that the transmission was going bad every time it happened, then I would remember what the deal was.

I also didn't enjoy the idea of driving around with NiMH batteries in the rear end. While Toyota says it's just about impossible to release the battery electrolites, I know that is inacurrate. While working for the EPA our emergency response guys where involved in two accidents where the batteries did leak everywhere and created quite a problem for the firemen, medics and the environmental folks. Toyota even has an Emergency Response guide discussing how to handle the situation.

I didn't really like this car, but apparently I averaged 51.9 mpg and went almost 400 miles on 6 gallons of gas. After I realized that, I liked it a bit better.

Work stuff version 2

More SPCC updates, but no alarms or damaged vehicles to report. Today I was running around Perry county. It is very pretty in that area, especially with the leaves changing colors. But it is very rural and I have no idea how I found the stations that I was trying to find. Many of the roads aren't labeled and are just tricky to navigate in general.

At one point I found myself on a gravel road and startled an Amish boy and girl who were out playing with a knotted rope. I don't think they were used to seeing too many vehicles. Then I confused them even more by waiving at them, they had no idea how to respond to that.

Then I found an old wooden, covered, one lane bridge that I had to cross. I was very annoyed that I forgot the camera today because it was pretty cute.

I got to drive around in the Wayne National Forest which was very pretty. Discovered that most of Perry county does not have cell phone coverage, which presented a problem for me when I needed to enter the stations.

Stopped in Shawnee Ohio, which had a sign up that it was on the national historic places registry. The little town was all done up like the wild west, but it was a dead ghost town as far as I could tell.

I also discovered that the New Straitsville Moonshine Festival will be occuring in the next couple of weeks. You know, if you're looking for something to do that is....

It was a fun day.

Work Stuff

I am responsible for updating the spill prevention and counter control (SPCC) plans for 26 power stations scattered throughout Ohio and one in West Virginia. This involves me going to each of those stations, looking to see what equipment has changed, documenting said changes and updating the site map. I decided that I would work on these all week and see how many I could wrap up. I got my self a rental car (our version of a fleet vehicle) and took off first thing Monday morning.

When we get to the station, we have to call in to the dispatching office and log in before we go inside. There are many reasons for this, mainly safety related. If the control room decides to do some switching remotely and it could be dangerous for someone to be standing around while they do so, they'll know I'm there. Also, some stations are armed with remotely controlled alarms and the dispatcher will turn those off before we go in.I called in and logged in to one of my stations, unlocked the gate, went in, turned around to lock the gate back and promptly lost my hearing when a splitting alarm went off. I called the dispatcher, very annoyed that they forgot the alarm and was informed that there was no alarm there. I assured him that there was indeed an alarm and he said he would call security to look into it. Twenty minutes later I give up and decide to just do what I came there to do and hope that I didn't get arrested by the police. Now for some reason I had ONE earplug, which I used and shoved my finger into the other ear while I tried to work. Then the alarm just stopped. The dispatcher called me back to tell me that this was an alarm that couldn't be controlled remotely, gave me two codes and told me to try one to reset the alarm. I told him it was already off, which confused him, but he told me that it would go off again if I didn't use the code when I left. Ok, I did what I needed to do, plugged in the code and ran away.

I go to the next station, call in and inform them that I see the same security system here, which they didn't know about either. They tell me to try the same codes and see what happens. Okay, but the security box was very, very far away from the gate and nobody knew how much time I had. So, I lined the car up perfectly, unlock the gate push it open, run back to the car and gunned it just in time for the gate to swing back and slam into the rental car leaving a very nice dent. But I did just make it to the security box in time and averted triggering the thing.

My mean old boss made me fill out an incident report for the dent, which annoyed me. But not as much as the actual report did. They don't really care about little dents, just accidents that are serious. Therefore, the report is very lengthy. One amusing thing came out of the station inspection, see picture below.

I can't imagine one of our station guys drawing a face on an oil filled circuit breaker, but that would mean that some kid snuck into the station and did this. Perhaps that annoying alarm is a good idea after all.

Free Time

We finished up the audit early this afternoon. Unfortunately, there were no flights that would work for us to get out a day early. So, we decided to head to "downtown" Bartlesville and see what we could find.

I annoyed everyone until they took me to the Price Tower, the Frank Lloyd Wright skyscraper. We missed the last tour of the tower but we did get to poke around on the first floor. All the rooms in the building are triangles, pointed to the middle and are cantilevered, which seems a bit dangerous for a place that's regularly hit by tornadoes.


All of the green on the building is copper. There is a lot of copper on the building and the restaurant is named Copper.
Triangles everywhere, even the lights and built in seating. The triangle thing did make for some very odd angles inside. I found an elevator stuck in a corner that only had about 3 feet of clearance in front of it and the opposite wall.

A very intricate sun dial outside that none of us could figure out how to read. It was still neat.
The community center next door to the Price Tower. They were selling tickets for "Broadway in Bartlesville".

The side entrance of the Phillip's House.

The front entrance.

We took the tour of the house, but I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside. The house still has all the original furniture, books, paintings, and even china and silverware, which is pretty neat.

I had to take a picture of the "air conditioning unit" for the house. It cascaded water down it to cool it off and then piped the cooler water back into the radiators. I thought it was cool, no pun intended.

Route 66

Today we drove out to Vinita, Oklahoma to look at the tiny little service center there. It's about an hour away from Bartlesville, and it's not an interesting drive. Vinita is home to the largest McDonalds in the world. It stretches across the Roy Rogers Highway, which is kinda cool. Dr. Phil was born here, it is the second oldest city in Oklahoma and the first one to get electricity. It's also best know for the old insane asylum. Apparently, at one point the patients in the asylum were the largest population in the city!

Route 66 runs through it, which is kinda cool.

We ate at a diner located on on Route 66 called Clanton's Cafe, which has been featured on the food network's Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. When we walked in everyone stopped and stared out at us. It's pretty obvious that they don't get too many strangers there. The first thing the waitress asked us was, "Where ya'll from?". It did have a big EAT sign, which I love.

Back in Bartlesville I noticed a cool sign at the end of the street that the service center is on and took a picture. It's like I've been in a timewarp all week.

Picks of the service center

The distribution dock area

I put this picture in just so Max might think his Mama has a cool job!

A sea of transformers

Oil and solvents in secondary containment. This is the kind of stuff we're looking at.

Our lovely work area. They shoved us into a conference room for a week.

Too Confining!

My flight was scheduled to take off at 6:55 am. So, I was up very early this morning. Poor Beth wasn't feeling well last night, so I tried to take care of all the kids so she could sleep. It kinda worked. That Wilson kid just won't let me put him to sleep at night and demands his mommy. But anyway, I was up a lot last night and 4:45 am came very early.

I staggered in to the airport and got on a very tiny plane. I had a foriegn exchange student sitting next to me. She had a very large spongebob square pants pillow that spilled over half into my seat and was armed with a digital camera. She was taking pictures of everything, random shots of the wing, pictures of me reading my magazine, a picture of the "Tray must be in the upright and locked position" sign on the tray in front of me. It was amusing.

Then in the row in front of me and on the other side of the isle was a very elderly man. He looked very nervous and held the flight safety booklet, following along as the stewardess explained what to do in the event of an emergency. A few minutes after take off, I became aware of music. It was him playing a very large harmonica. He played it the whole flight, but it was pretty quiet. I thought it was cute.

We had to change planes at St. Lois. This time we had to walk outside to get to the plane. As we were walking, my travel buddy kicked a bolt. We were hopeful that it hadn't fallen off of the plane we were getting on!

Finally, we made it to Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Apparently this is home to Frank Lloyd Wright's only skyscraper and there is a museum to Frank Phillips, of Phillips Petroleum. Besides that, there appears to be nothing else. I'm afraid this is going to be a long week!

OOOOOO-klahoma

All next week I will be in Oklahoma in our Public Service Company of Oklahoma territory. I will be spending the time with our auditing team as they conduct an environmental audit of a couple of service centers. I'm just observing and learning their wiley ways and hopefully won't be bored out of my mind! Although, even the auditors make it sound like that is an eventuality.

It's radioactive!

In a week I get to go to an uranium enrichment plant, American Centrifuge in Piketon, Ohio. Assuming that I pass the security clearance that is. As you might guess, enriching uranium takes a lot of electricity. There are a couple of dedicated stations located on the property which have some transformers that we would like to remove and dispose. It's been a bit of an ordeal since they have some lengthy process to make sure that they aren't radioactive first.

While poking around on the USEC website, I was intrigued by the megatons to megawats link. Check it out and see what's coming out of the decommissioning of the USSR warheads.

This is how I pay the bills, people.

By working in places that inspire horror film scripts.

I spent all day yesterday in Ironton, Ohio at a former generating plant of ours. This was a tiny little plant that made power just for the little trolley system in town. It hasn't made electricity in decades, and it is used now by our storerooms as a storage facility. We are selling the property, which is where I come in. I need to do a Phase I Environmental Assessment of the property to look for any environmental concerns.

FYI, the pictures do enlarge if you click on them.

This place has a basement, unfortunately. I'm greeted by this door at the bottom of the stairs which just screams, "It puts the lotion in the basket."


Off of the stairs is a creepy side room/crawl space area. Throughout the property I found mystery jars and buckets of chemicals. I have no idea what Lithoform is, but we've got to get rid of it!
In the basement we found a lovely old boiler.
I went to open the doors of the boiler to see what might have been shoved inside. My boss announces, "We better see if there's a body in there! Wouldn't that be cool?" After opening the doors, I thought I HAD found a body. It wasn't very funny.
Here's a shot of the boiler and some of the room. All the concrete you see laying around fell off of the ceiling. The floor above us isn't very structurally sound and pieces keep falling off. I just knew one of us was going to take a header.

We are so interested in the boiler because it is wrapped in asbestos that is not in good condition.
My boss wanted to get photographic proof that I do actually work, on occasion. Smarty pants. I'm collecting a PCB wipe sample off of the floor in case we have spilled mineral oil that contained PCBs sometime in the past.

Here are three old timey fire extinguishers. I thought they were neat.