I think I would try to open all the loads first and see if i can get the utility to open their primary protection before i tried to operate that puppy.

I agree with Mikesh; I'd also get the Pringle rep out to look at it ahead of time so you could get all of the parts needed to fix it ordered and on site before you schedule your shutdown.
You should be able to have the POCO pull their OCP, open this guy, then fix this and get the power restored.
Based on what it looks like in the picture, you're probably looking at a 6-8 hour outage.
I've had decent luck with our local POCO if I ask the lineman to kill the power first thing on his schedule and come back right before the end of his shift to liven it up again.

I stock Pringle parts and do all repairs in house.

The repair consisted of as noted above opening all downstream loads and a utility outage.

Replacement of defective parts, testing the contact resistance of the power contacts (micro-ohm), testing the GFP and meggering the line and load bus (utility disconnected, downstream loads off and GFP control fuses lifted).

Nice find! What's the delta T on this?

I have the complete report in my office I will have to research this. This particular photo was taken in a FLIR proprietary program and the format was not recognizable by photo bucket (at least I was not able to convert it)

VAelec.

My office is in Sterling.

If you have a chance, you can pull images straight from the camera before inserting it into one of the FLIR reporting programs and what you see on the camera is what you will see in the image you pull off of it. Just FYI.

My office is also in Sterling (I don't like a long commute, hence living in the same town). I have actually been by your shop to pick up a ground fault relay and various other parts to repair problems like you found. Is this one of the nightmare to shutdown government/gov. contractor buildings in the region? If so, have fun scheduling the shutdown! Often they don't seem to understand that it's not an IF it fails, but a WHEN it fails issue.

I really need to buy a thermal imaging camera and do my own inspection, just out of self protection.

When the customer balks at repairing the switch just explain how many days or weeks they will be out when it fails or their liability exposure should it blow when someone tries to operate it and the lawyer finds out they knew there is a problem. Of course that is assuming the building survives the fire. The hardest part of any of these kinds of discoveries is the amount of time to failure and expressing that to the customer who will naturally want to wait as long as possible (read forever). No one actually know how long the customer can go before there is a deadline.

I generally shrug and tell that it's their call. They can schedule the 8 hour shutdown at their convenience or call me in the middle of the night during their busiest season and we'll start the clock running on their 1-2 week outage...and the estimate that I gave them won't be valid.

We sometimes run into customers that balk at making the repairs, we just let them know in writing the critical nature of the issue. A few times they have hired others to fix the discrepancy. Can't win them all.

Sounds a lot like how most cinemas look at projector repairs.

I had one cinema, who was advised of an imminent failure of a key part (cost; $2,000); they chose to wait.

The breakdown happened with a full house (500+ people), on a Friday night, with one of the top grossing films of the year. They had to fly the part in on a charter jet, fly the tech in on another charter, refund all the paying customers, lost an additional 5 shows, and caused over $1,500 in damage to the film.

I was told by the asst. manager that it all came out to over $14,000!!

Some people never learn.

But of course, that wasn't potentially life threatening. But sadly as seen by quite a few posts here that cavalier attitude carries over into electrical equipment upkeep.

As the picture shows we do IR scanning. A few years in the fall we recorded a Class One Discrepancy (not critical put should be addressed to avoid problems) with a Main CB for an MCC, The "A" phase line side lug was loose on the circuit breaker. The customer was put on notice and a proposal for repair of all discrepancies was submitted with the detailed IR Report.

Nothing was done, I discussed the report with the facility engineer and explained how Class One Discrepancies could become Class Two and on to Class Three's. He explained how there was no money in the budget.

Well we received an emergency call Friday morning before Memorial Day, from this facility, their MCC was down. Arrived on site to find The "A" phase lug fried and the circuit breaker had thermal damage beyond repair.

I told him he was lucky as this was a 3 day week end (give us time to get parts)...NO WAY there was a law firm that had a major case due next week and they were working all week end. The MCC was for the elevators and HVAC equipment.

Had to find a CB, located one in CA. had it freighted in and had to install on Saturday. Also had to temporary the CB for the 30 some hours it took to obtain the replacement CB.

The original repair cost was $345.00 (as part of the overall proposal), the repair during an emergency exceeded $10,000.00 Dollars. Large part of this cost was the CB and temporary. There should have been some "I TOLD YOU SO MONIES".

I love it!! That's a perfect description for these kinds of situations.

Heck, I think I'll include it as a clause in some of my bids from now on.....

The issue with me is, we work almost every week end and many nights. I try to keep the holiday week ends free for me and the employees. This was avoidable and cost several workers (including me) one day of there 3 day weekend.

And the statement "Think about the OT Money", doesn't play out as we value the 3 day week ends. We get enough OT.