http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2004/Apr-13-Tue-2004/news/23639094.html

Not sure what caused the failure, but they apaprently ran seconadry power in the same raceway as primary, so the couldn't even have secondary endergized when they inspected the primary.

Naww, it's that "Pinch" they used on "Oceans' Eleven"!



That was the first thing I thought of when hearing the News of Power Loss at the Hotel / Casino.
Immediately spouted out about the "Pinch" and got some "Could it have been that???" looks from a few People!
(they were thinking Terrorists, not Vault Robbers).

Gee, Terry Benedict is gonna be P.O. again!

Some humor attempts by me to brighten your day.

Scott35

Well I guess it was not such a good time for copper prices to go up..... Seems silly to me to have your primary and backup lines in the same duct, maybe this has something to do with the electrical gods from the village, maybe they are on vacation..

I don’t remember the name, but one of the newer Vegas superhotels now has a switchyard out back with a 115- or 138-kV subtransmission loop feed {two circuits} and a pair of 60,000kVA transformers. That’s “gettin’ up there” for a building electrical system.

I’m sure there will be some serious fingerpointing as a result of that outage.




[This message has been edited by Bjarney (edited 04-13-2004).]

This situation kind of confuses me. I worked on Treasure Island when it was built. That place had multiple 12KV feeds, lots of unit subs and a huge central plant (in the parking structure) with multiple medium voltage back up generators. Bellagio is a bigger, newer hotel by the same developer and they say they lost everything!? I wonder if they will ever say what really happened. Those Vegas hotel jobs are absolutely massive in scope. I was one of 400 electricians on Treasure island. (Memories )

LMAO Scott..... I'm on the same wavelength as you! Although..... There IS an ECN member that seems to frequent Las Vegas in search of electrical tomfoolery! https://www.electrical-contractor.net/ubb/Forum5/HTML/000456.html

Hmmmmmm? ;p

-Randy

"Value Engineering" at it's best!

I wonder what the cost difference was, between what was and what should have been done and how much $ was lost(repairs and lost revenue), due to this incident?

You got that right.

You think someone is now job hunting?

How much money do you think this outage cost?

How many miles of cable could have been installed for that price?

Wow Stamcom

I think the loss was $1 million per day.

Bellagio is back in business. I think I heard it cost them $12.5 million? I wonder if the slot's pay-outs will be tightened up for awhile?

steve

Wow. So, essentially these folks just paid $12,500,000 to make sure that their primary and secondary power supplies run in different duct banks?

That's "quality" with a capital "6"!

-John

I don't know if they corrected the "engineering" or just pulled new cables to restore power.


This just in - http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2004/Apr-15-Thu-2004/news/23660454.html


steve


[This message has been edited by stamcon (edited 04-15-2004).]

I'm actually pretty curious about this one... Not your typical "bird across the phases" thing.... Which is actually what messed up LAX a few days ago...

-Randy

www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?SQID=93479&SPID=238&page=1

Bjarney,
Your link just takes me to the home page. I did see the post I think you are referencing earlier today. I don't quite understand the authors description of t tapping multiple generators to the primary side.
I haven't been able to post there for some reason lately so I am waiting to see more of that thread.

Ooops. Try cut and pasting thread238-93479 in the search field.

[Hopeffully the pop-ups won't drive you mad.]

I ran across this thread and thought I would post some updated info on this subject. (From a source close to the issue)
As I now understand it the normal and emergency feeders were not installed in the same "duct." They were however, installed through the same man holes.
A bit of clarification is in order here. The "emergency" feeders were in fact an optional standby system making the mixing of systems NEC compliant. The true emergency system for the hotel worked just fine.
The initial problem resulted from a faulted cable.
More clarification! The cables were not racked in the manholes. They were laying on top of each other and the stress at a pinch point (probably where the cable enters or exits the duct) damaged the cable. Also, there was an engineering decision to rely the cable shields as the equipment grounding conductors. The end result of which contributed to the the overheating and failure of the cable.
The faulted cable was on the bottom taking out many of the cables above it when it failed. This is why the optional standby system didn't work. The transfer switches are smart enough not to transfer into a fault. The cables that were active had to be de-energized to work on the system.
A couple of thing can be learned here.
1.Always rack and fireproof medium voltage cables in man holes.
2.Always run a table 250.122 sized equipment grounding conductor with medium voltage circuits. (Shields are not rated to Carry ground faults for more than a few cycles. After which over heating and cable damage will surely occur.)
3.Spend the money to do partial discharge testing once a year. This small investment would have caught this problem before it happened.

One sad side note: I never saw this in the news but heard it from industry sources.
After the hotel was up and running again an electrician from (I believe) the original installing contractor and a rep from the transfer switch manufacturer were looking at an issue in the medium voltage gear. The electrician reach inside to point something out when the voltage tracked down his arm and flashed over. The electrician Died of his injuries a few days later and the transfer switch rep was severely burned. The transfer switch rep was doing start up on one of our jobs when this happened but I haven't hared an update on him in a while. I will post back to this thread when I found out.

Disclaimer: All info is second hand from people closely involved in the re-work. I believe everything I have stated to be accurate.

Thanks for the update and comments, Nick.

Sad to hear of the loss. It only takes a moment of lost concentration.