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I obtained a pole pig

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teslacoolguy

Tue Apr 29 2008, 02:29AM

Registered Member #1107 Joined: Thu Nov 08 2007, 10:09PM
Location:
Posts: 792

Well today i found a very nice 10kva 14,000v pole pig locally for $300 so i bought it. I know and fully understand the dangers involved with one of these things and i am going to invest in some 17,000v insulating gloves for protection. I am very new to pigs and i have a couple of questions.

1. what is the best way to ballast
2. what do i have to watch out for when powering the pig
3. can it be ran unballasted
4. any other things i should look/watch out for

Arcstarter

Tue Apr 29 2008, 04:12AM

Registered Member #1225 Joined: Sat Jan 12 2008, 01:24AM
Location: Beaumont, Texas, USA
Posts: 2253

Wow! Congratulation on that! Wow i would love one. But from what i have heard you cannot run it without a ballast. It would be like powering the secondary side of a 240volt/120 transformer on 120volts. It would pull alot of current and burn it up. For the ballast i would use how ever many watts of mots w/ shorted secondaries i wanted. But that is because they are readily available and free because they are throw outs to the side of the street. I got one just today. Another forum on here suggests that you can use 3-4 times the rated power for short amounts of time. That is 40kva!

Zum Beispiel

Tue Apr 29 2008, 06:05AM

Registered Member #514 Joined: Sun Feb 11 2007, 12:27AM
Location: Somewhere in Pirkanmaa, Finland
Posts: 295

teslacoolguy wrote ...

17,000v insulating gloves for protection.

Why would you need those? Use a chicken stick. Seriously, you do not want to get near that thing when powered up.

lpfthings

Tue Apr 29 2008, 06:22AM

Registered Member #1361 Joined: Thu Feb 28 2008, 10:57AM
Location: Cairns, Australia
Posts: 305

Erm yeah, use a chicken stick!!! The arc cn streatch a very long distance, so they could easily arc up to your body if you are close enough!
1. I think you can use a few mots with shorted secondaries, not sure on this one.

2. Very big arcs! they can stretch VERY far, you do not wanna be anywhere near the thing while its on!

3. Yes, it can be run unballasted, but only for a few seconds at a time, and you risk blowing your breaker every run.

4. Not really, just make sure you have a dead mans switch on the thing, aswell as making sure your chicken stick is dry

flannelhead

Tue Apr 29 2008, 11:34AM

Registered Member #952 Joined: Mon Aug 13 2007, 11:07AM
Location: Finland
Posts: 388

Wow!
Who's gonna pay the electricity bills? Your dad?

teslacoolguy

Tue Apr 29 2008, 12:08PM

Registered Member #1107 Joined: Thu Nov 08 2007, 10:09PM
Location:
Posts: 792

My dad but im going to pitch in

also im going to run it on 240v, 120v on each terminal so should i put a mot on each side or 2 mots in parallell/series what config should i use?

Ultra7

Tue Apr 29 2008, 02:18PM

Registered Member #1157 Joined: Thu Dec 06 2007, 12:11PM
Location: Houston, TX
Posts: 307

A note on "Hot Gloves".

I work in the cable industry where occasionally, a storm will blow trees onto the power lines and break the power poles, where our fiber and coax is also attached. So we are issued hot-gloves to assist in keeping us alive when working on the cables while the power guys do their thing.

Hot gloves are just one part of the insulating suit you need to be able to touch high voltage lines. You also need a set of HV insulating sleeves that attach to your HV coveralls and HV insulating boots with with clip on grounding cables. This also assumes you have the silver suit under garment with the head cover and the face shield. This get up feels like you are wearing a space suit. Movement is very restricted, and with the liners, rubber "hot gloves" and outer protective shells, you can barely move your fingers to pick up the cables. I would advise against getting near the Power distribution Transformer when it is powered up, period.
The hot gloves won't really allow you to do any precise work on the system anyway as you may as well be wearing mittens made with throw pillows.

Life is too short to take chances like that.

quicksilver

Tue Apr 29 2008, 03:31PM

Registered Member #1408 Joined: Fri Mar 21 2008, 03:49PM
Location: Oracle, AZ
Posts: 679

I second the chicken stick idea. The biggest thing with the gloves (aside from the mittens issues) is that ANY moisture (sweat) through any crack, makes them more of a danger. but more than that, they can create a false sense of security. Proximity is more significant due to conductive flooring, etc.

I had a chance to buy a pig and noticed that I couldn't tell if it had a leak due to the dirt & debris. I would clean the thing very, very well to begin with. Check the ceramics as well. Different companies have differing reasons why they sell off their stuff. if a line went down, the impact (even if it's not direct on the transformer) could have a deleterious effect or bust a seam.

A lot of things could be repaired but it's better to know if something needs attention prior to a little annoyance becoming a real threat. Some companies like Westinghouse had spec-sheets available. If you could find everything about it; you might be able to get some great technical information. I would get all the info I could before I powered it up. Ballasting aside, there may be issues that most people wouldn't know without that information (mounting issues, etc). I've thought about getting a pig a few times but when I weigh all the things I would really want to know to maintain safety, I find that it's not as simple as it seemed at first.

J. Aaron Holmes

Tue Apr 29 2008, 05:11PM

Registered Member #477 Joined: Tue Jun 20 2006, 11:51PM
Location: Seattle, WA
Posts: 546

lpfthings wrote ...

3. Yes, it can be run unballasted, but only for a few seconds at a time, and you risk blowing your breaker every run.

If the breaker doesn't blow every time, something else may. Never run a pole pig unballasted. If your main breaker goes before the breaker on the pig circuit, high voltage spikes can be delivered to your whole house as the pig de-energizes, and other electronic devices may be destroyed as a result. If there is a lot of wire between your pig and the breaker, deliberately running it into a short can damage that wire, making for a lot of "fun" cutting into walls and rerunning it. You could even start a fire! In short (no pun intended), running a pig unballasted is anything but a harmless exercise in breaker-blowing. MOTs, maybe. Pigs and PTs, no. They will definitely pull a zillion Amps immediately, and you'll be betting that all your protective devices work as specified. Not a bet I'll take! I've had breakers fail before.

...but ballasting needn't be hard. At least not if your goal is to simply test the beast, which you're probably eager to do. Just put a 1000-1500W space heater in series with one of the pig's LV hot leads, then connect the neutral straight through. Leave the other pig LV hot lead unconnected. Now you can literally just "plug it in" to a standard 120V outlet, and you should be able to draw some nice arcs off your pig to verify its functionality.

Cheers,
Aaron, N7OE

Shaun

Tue Apr 29 2008, 06:46PM

Registered Member #690 Joined: Tue May 08 2007, 03:47AM
Location: New Jersey, USA
Posts: 616

Also you needn't worry so much about the electricity bill; I doubt the pig will even make a noticeable dent in it.

Think about it: Electricity is sold to you by the kilowatt-hour (3.6MJ), which is a 1000W device running for 1 hour or your pole pig running full-power for 6 minutes. Thats far longer than most SGTC runs I've witnessed, and I doubt you will pull arcs from the transformer alone for that long.

I don't know what your electricity costs per kilowatt-hour, but its probably well under a dollar for one kilowatt hour.

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