In the tabloids today there is this story about a lake that went electric yesterday. It's in Örebro, a town in southern Sweden. Some recent wiring works appears to be have a ground fault. You would think that it would be pretty easy to shut down, but the sparkies working on it haven't yet tracked down the cause of the problem. The guy from the municipality who's in charge calms the public who are not discouraged from bathing: "It's not dangerous in any way. In that case it would have hurt. Many have experienced it as unpleasant"
"I didn't feel it despite swimming across the lake. But we do take it seriously."

Tabloid

Guys, would you tell the customers that a ground fault isn't dangerous as long as the shock is only unpleasant? "Call back when it hurts"

Yikes!

You'd think that the authorities would be urging people to stay out of the lake until the fault is fixed.



If you're still alive.......

C-H,
My understanding of a ground fault, would mean that the current would have been enough to trip the protection and clear any fault on the cable.
What sort of voltage does this cable carry?.
First thing I would be doing, is isolating the supply to the cable.

I don't know what voltage it is, but assuming it is a distribution cable of some sort. If it's LV there is probably not much in the way of ground fault protection other than the fuses. It would have to leak several hundred amps before a fuse blows.

I think it is safe to say that something wasn't done the way it is supposed to, e.g. earthing of the cabinets, or some of those darn copper thieves have been at it. (Those are by the way a real danger. I had to call the train people a few weeks ago to inform them that thieves had stolen all the green and yellow cable from a station. Every metal pole and light was ungrounded!!! )

[This message has been edited by C-H (edited 07-31-2006).]

Way back when I used to travel to school by train we had one day when the jounrey was very slow and then we sat outside the station for about an hour. We were then told that all the delays were due to somebody having stolen the signaling cables at Harpenden! That would have been somewhere around 1978.