Yesterday I was on a site visit at Pacific Steel in Otahuhu, and I was deeply impressed by the enormous power level of the equipment used to melt iron, scrap steel, aggregates to liquid steel, at over 1530 degrees Celsius, and shaped into bars for further processing.

The humming and grunting sound of a transformer working at short circuit conditions and act as a huge arc welder was most impressive. The ground was vibrating as a new arc was struck at a new batch of iron and steel for melting.

This machine was running at between 20 and 25 Megawatts of power level during the process. Every 20 minutes a crucible was ready to be lifted and taken down to the next stage.

The supply to the arc welders comes from a 70 MW Transformer, 110 / 33 kV "dirty" bus section, which feeds the arc furnaces, which are about 25 MW each, continuous, and run at 33 kV at 400-800 Amps at the primary, and 42000 - 56000 Amps at 270 - 330 Volts ac at the secondary.

The supply cables are watercooled to the carbon rods.

The "clean" bus section is supplied from a 40 MW transformer at 110 / 33 kV and feeds local transformers to the shredders and rolling mills. Other supplies are at 11 kV all over the place.

I have put a couple of photo's in the galleries to have a look at.

Also I put a 2½ minute video clip on Youtube under my RODALCO member name.

I can supply the encripted code but am not sure if I'm allowed to post that on ECN.

Gidday Ray,
Nice pics, that's pretty mind-blowing stuff.
So that's why steel is so expensive.

Link to Ray's video HERE.

Might pay to turn your sound down before you view this.

Man, that video is something else!
Thanks Ray.

Good video. When I worked in a steel plant, we weren't allowed to take cameras in. I still feel for the guys who work in the melt shop.

Thanks Mike, for putting that link to Youtube in.

I got about 10 minutes of video and edited it down to about 2½ minutes.(10MB).
Took about 1 hour to download over the landline but it came through allright.

Regards, Raymond

{Not a worry, mate)

Ray, is that the steel works out at Glenbrook?
I could be wrong with the name, but there was a 3rd or 4th alarm fire in the early 90's there?
It started in the cables in a raceway under the plant, if that is any help.
I remember reading a write-up about it in Electrolink magazine.

No Mike, this is the one at Otahuhu where they process scrap metal from old cars, old railwaytracks and industrial metal waste.
Most is processed into reinforcing steel or steel bars to be milled in square bars and slabs and exported overseas.

The one in Glenbrook is mostly heated with coal of memory and parts with electricity and sees about 3 long coal trains every day.

The LV 42000 Amps cables are watercooled. There was a blow up when a roof collapsed on top of the LV busbars a couple of weeks ago. The TX just kept going and was eventually shut down when smoke appeared from an other area where it was not supposed to be.

O.T. I'm in Christchurch on Wednesday for 1/2 day only, to have a look at a metering workshop.