Its true sometimes you must work hot, but if you dont have why take the risk, it only takes an extra 5 minutes to use the circuit tracer, then shut off the breaker.
There was some guys working on a Sub-station who were maintenance, some college, and the switch gear was 4160, and they were told to work it hot, with only leather gloves, one guy went home and refused, so the forman took the other guy and went to work on the switchgear, the younger guy got burnt badly, and from what I have heard the forman was fired.
yes the Poco works hot but did you ever notice the equipment they have. Rubber gloves with protectors, rubber mats to drape over the other lines whyle they work on only one of the lines plus the buccket is insulated.
One summer we had an outage due to a summer storm and I watched the line crew change the cut-out fuse he got as close as 10 feet to the cut-out with a dead stick. replaced the fuse then dropped the bucket anotherr 5 feet extended the dead-stick and closed the cut-out.
Unless its absolutely no other way I for one will not work hot, and thats my company rule.
Making hot-taps in the rain is no fun either but a necessary evil, the problem is that drop is referred to as an infinite buss, and only the secondary is fused when the primary is fed with 12.8kv it takes an awefull lot of current to trip that fuse, and I really dont care to find out how much.
