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Catch faulty capacitor-bank switching before it takes down customer equipment
Unexpected failure of two industrial chillers at Gainesville Regional Utilities led engineers on a “crime-scene” style hunt for the culprit. A pre-installed PMI Eagle 330 recorder captured the moment of truth: brief, high-energy surges on phases B and C coincident with a 12.47 kV capacitor-bank operation two blocks away. By matching waveform evidence with the utility’s capacitor-control logs, investigators proved that faulty vacuum switches and blown arresters in the bank launched a transient powerful enough to pop both motor-control fuses and shut down cooling in the middle of a workday. The paper reconstructs the sequence—from first fuse blow to post-mortem equipment inspection—and explains why earlier events had eluded diagnosis. Clear strip-chart captures, field photographs, and step-by-step reasoning show how a single mis-switch can ripple through medium-voltage feeders, damage customer assets, and expose the utility to six-figure claims.Key topics include:
- Initial Conditions
- Review of Evidence
Why utilities should care:
Capacitor banks are everywhere on distribution feeders, yet degraded switches or arresters can inject steep-front transients that look harmless unless you’re recording at high resolution. This case study delivers unmistakable PQ fingerprints of a bad-acting bank, demonstrates how portable monitors turn anecdotal complaints into defensible facts, and quantifies the downtime, revenue loss, and repair costs a utility ultimately shoulders. Reading it equips engineers and managers with the evidence chain and monitoring practices needed to spot, verify, and correct faulty switching events before they escalate—protecting reliability metrics and customer trust.
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