Magnetic Field Trouble in Los Angeles: Equipment Failures

[Adder_Noir]

I'll hang on for a bit anyway. Trailer Park Boys is about to start on para comedy and I'm on a re-wire in the morning so will be out for the day

 

[business man]

Here's another thought. Do you notice it being worse on anyone particular floor/area than another?

Hard to say, because it is getting progressively worse. We did however move our server room (computers) to the bottom floor of a two story building, but left the phone equipment upstairs. The new server room has two walls of concrete and at a lower level we felt it would be less susceptible to RF signals. There is a freeway running across the front of the building 400 to 500ft away and we initialy thought that outlaw truckers were transmitting with illegal equipment causing our problems. We pretty much ruled this out now, but the stability DID improve for some reason for about a week.

**Edit**

One thing that would prove if it was an external magnetic influence for sure would be to kill all power to your building by isolating it at your distribution board. Then measure the metallic areas you said were having trouble before and see if any current is flowing through them.

This sounds promising. Then i suppose we could start turning things on until we find the problem appliance, right?

If not, then it's an internal wiring/appliance error with your property of some kind, and I would guess a lot easier to locate once you knew exactly what you were dealing with.

Furthermore I need a little clarification. What is a U.P.S.? Is it what we in the UK call an RCD? A device like a breaker which detects current differences between phase and neutral and shuts the circuit down if one exists?

Uninteruptable Power Supply or battery backup

If that's so then you can use them to see if your live/phase (whatever you want to call it) is losing current somewhere it shouldn't be (like to Earth for example).[/

QUOTE]

Sounds logical as well, I will suggest it.

Thank you for your comments.

 

[business man]

I forgot something else. while trying to find places in the building that were less susceptable, we used what we now call Canary's. They are small inexpensive U.P.S.'s that are not considered "online" because they have a very slight delay when they switch from line power to battery power. We found these to be more sensitive to events than some of our other equipment, so we place them all around the building to see which ones chirp. They have little alarms in them. These tests were inconclusive because the good and bad areas tend to jump around and again the problems are escalating in general.

 

[Adder_Noir]

What you said about testing each and every appliance until you find the potentially guilty one is exactly right. Most of the time that's how we end up sourcing electrical faults, by process of elimination.

It really is important for you to find out if you're still getting currents flowing through conductors when your building is isolated. This is a must. Call an electrician out as soon as is realistically possible and see if he can tell you if these disturbances are still present when isolated.

Do you have any neighbours nearby who might be using high current appliances? One further possiblity is that a local business or domestic property or something is feeding their return path through an Earth rather than neutral which runs into your property. Again it's just another possibility. The more suggestions you have ready when you've got a qualified person there the better

 

[business man]

Just thought of something else:

Our T1 phone line, as I said before, is about a 5 to 600ft run of cat7 cable, which is from my understanding unsheilded.

My computer wiz decided he would try to find out if that had anything to do with his relatively slow internet connection ( A T1 should be lightning fast) so he hooks up a computer close to the incoming line at the terminal blocks and he says the thing flys over there.

Could EMF's be slowing down data on an unshielded cable?

 

[Adder_Noir]

Absolutely if you've got them all coiled up together on the floor. It's basically now become an inductor if that's the case and a back e.m.f. will be present. No shielding means it has no protection from this whatsoever.

 

[Adder_Noir]

Is it possible that there could be current running in the ground? We noticed that some of our conduits had current!

Like I said before this sticks out like a sore thumb. Try and find out how big these currents are. It's quite important as it will tell if this is the source of your other problems or not.

 

[business man]

What you said about testing each and every appliance until you find the potentially guilty one is exactly right. Most of the time that's how we end up sourcing electrical faults, by process of elmination.

It really is important for you to find out if you're still getting currents flowing through conductors when your building is isolated. This is a must. Call an electrician out as soon as is realistically possible and see if he can tell you if these disturbances are still present when isolated.

That makes sense

Do you have any neighbours nearby who might be using high current appliances? One further possiblity is that a local business or domestic property or something is feeding their return path through an Earth rather than neutral which runs into your property. Again it's just another possibility. The more suggestions you have ready when you've got a qualified person there the better [/

QUOTE]

My neighbors are mostly distribution companies, so this might be ruled out, they do not use big machinery. But what if this main feed to the city is improperly grounded??

 

[Adder_Noir]

It's more a case of, what would happen if this main feed were not properly insulated from earth/ground. This would cause current loss at the substation and it would be obvious to the power company. If the feed is responsible for as much as it is suggested that it is then big problems would be occurring by now and the power company would likely already be all over it. I suspect it isn't the problem to be honest.

The only time an issue would arise when the main feed substation were not properly grounded would be during Earth fault conditions at your property. This would mean the Earth fault path would have to be greatly extended to the next Earth rod at the next nearest substation. This would lengthen the return path and lower the Earth conductor current.

I'm still betting on a faulty appliance or a wiring fault, i.e. an Earth in a neutral or vice versa by mistake

 

[business man]

Absolutely if you've got them all coiled up together on the floor. It's basically now become an inductor if that's the case and a back e.m.f. will be present. No shielding means it has no protection from this whatsoever.

They are not coiled up. It's a pretty straight run.

 

[business man]

It's more a case of, what would happen if this main feed were not properly insulated from earth/ground. This would cause current loss at the substation and it would be obvious to the power company. If the feed is responsible for as much as it is suggested that it is then big problems would be occurring by now and the power company would likely already be all over it. I suspect it isn't the problem to be honest.

The only time an issue would arise when the main feed substation were not properly grounded would be during Earth fault conditions at your property. This would mean the Earth fault path would have to be greatly extended to the next Earth rod at the next nearest substation. This would lengthen the return path and lower the Earth conductor current.

I'm still betting on a faulty appliance or a wiring fault, i.e. an Earth in a neutral or vice versa by mistake [/

QUOTE]

I will be all over this one tomorrow. Thanks

Any other comments? At this point I need to try everything.

 

[Adder_Noir]

That's all I can think of for now. Doubtless something else will occur by tomorrow. For now I'm nipping off to bed. Best of luck pal

 

[business man]

I may have to sign off too :zzz:

 

[business man]

Here is the latest:

We set up our dedicated generator circuit last night with fused disconnect and so far that has been stable, so we are trying to start up the computers, which are running exclusively on that circuit.

Before leaving last night my Operations Mgr. switched off breakers to the HVAC systems and exhaust fans to see if they were the problem with regard to appliances or wiring.

When he arrived this morning other breakers had tripped and all morning we have been experiencing brown outs on various circuits. So based on the theory of interior appliance and wiring issues it seems we can rule out the HVAC/fan circuits now, correct?

The power company had six guys out to the building last night and not one of them was very helpful or even sympathetic, actually they were more adversarial.

Fortunately one of the guys was curious when he found out that breakers in our main service were tripping with little or no load, so they may want to investigate this further today.

 

[Adder_Noir]

I would imagine yes you can rule out HVAC being the problem now.

Fortunately one of the guys was curious when he found out that breakers in our main service were tripping with little or no load, so they may want to investigate this further today.

Sounds like they're not breakers mate they're RCD's or Residual Current Devices. They constantly look for even the slightest change in current between the live/phase and the neutral. If it detects one (can be as little as 10mA or so) it will trip the circuit.

The reason they throw when a change in current is detected is that the said change in current between the live and neutral means that some current is being lost to earth. If your man is correct I'd say that was a major breakthrough.

It means you have a faulty wire or appliance dumping current to earth. That may not be your only fault but it's the avenue I'd be charging down right now if I were in your shoes

 

[business man]

Here is a link to yesterdays report from Tom the expert from San Fransisco:
(It's a jpg from a scan so if it is too small, place cursor over document and wait for gold box to appear then click on center of gold box, which should make it readable.)

http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r59/sunset91/sunset91.jpg

Please hang in there with me, it's far from being solved. Phone company is installing a new shielded T1 line today all the way to our phone equipment.
Right now we are dropping calls like crazy and loosing customers by the minute!

 

[business man]

I was told that they are not RCD's, but in fact standard over current breakers, apparently not connected to neutral.

Could these breakers also trip for the same reason?

I just heard, minutes ago that a rep. from the power company witnessed an event personnally. Maybe now we will get some action from him!

 

[Emicro]

I work for a company that manufactures, installs and maintains electron microscopes. In order to determine if there is a lot of vibration or EMI we contract out to other companies. If this problem persists, there is a company called TCM that specializes in detection and cancellation of vibration and electromagnetic field. http://www.techmfg.com/index.htm?gclid=CNq8s8TAuIgCFTosGAodOlG4zA

 

[Adder_Noir]

I was told that they are not RCD's, but in fact standard over current breakers, apparently not connected to neutral.

Could these breakers also trip for the same reason?

No is the simple answer. Standard over-current breakers will not trip under low-load conditions. I'll print off Tom's report and have a read through it now.

Get someone to have another check as to what load they are tripping at if you can. Standard breakers tripping under low-load conditions is a very unusual event indeed and may mean something exceptionally weird is going on at your premises. This will be a fascinating discovery when the source of the problem is rooted out

 

[Adder_Noir]

Here is one solution. In fact it might be the very reason this is going on. Looking at Tom's report it states they have observed bursts of high frequency current. This gave me an idea as to how your breakers could be tripping at low loads, or what appear to be low loads.

Have you ever heard of such a thing in electricity as harmonics?

They are caused by devices which draw current in non-linear fashions such as thyristor controlled drives. What they are, are very high frequency currents and voltages (much higher than the 60Hz being delivered being used as power) which contribute no useful power to anything but wreak havoc on electrical equipment.

Whenever we fitted a high current drive to a premises in my last job we always put huge inductors behind it to stop harmonics traveling back up the line. The reason is inductors oppose current with greater enthusiasm at high frequencies. Have a very, very good think if you've got anything like this kind of equipment on your premises. It would account for virtually all the phenomena you just mentioned, including the standard breakers going under what appears to be no/low-load but is infact a burst of high-frequency current operating at a frequency too high for a standard meter to pick it up.

It might not be the reason, but it certainly looks like it might be.

 

[Adder_Noir]

Just read Tom's report and I would say indeed that this is what it is. CD drives will not open by themselves no matter how much current is being dumped to Earth by mistake.

Have a look at getting some harmonic filters (large inductors) fitted right away. I'm very sure that's what this is but it may indeed not be coming from your premises.

Tell the power company right away if they're still there that you think it may be a harmonic problem.

 

[Adder_Noir]

Just a quick note before I go and make a cup of tea. These disturbances may well be originating outside of your property. They may infact be entering your property via the earth/ground line for example. This would account for why your problems got worse when you improved your grounding.

If I were you I'd be straight in touch with a contractor or the power company and get harmonic filters installed on your premises on your phase, neutral and Earth where your supply enters your property.

And the sooner the better

**Edit**

I'm signing off for the night. I'll pm ypu my mobile number in case you get really stuck during the night.

 

[business man]

I will get this info over to my guys asap. It's hard to get to them right now. They are all so busy directing traffic. I will try to update as more info comes back to me.

Thank you for your time and input.

 

[Gokul43201]

Just a suggestion, but do you have a compass? If you take it just outside your building and it points to the power main instead of pointing North, then there's a good chance that the main is indeed the source of your woes.

The B-field from a transmission line points, not towards the line, but tangentially away from it. Furthermore, I know of no compass that has a response time below the 16 ms needed to detect an oscillating 60Hz field. A typical compass will not respond to a rapidly oscillating field; it will settle along the direction of the static field.

From what I've read so far, it seems there's a likely shielding problem here...has the office been checked for possible ground loops and such?

Also, with a half-decent oscilloscope and a length of wire, you can check for yourself if there's large 60Hz fields in the air (compared to someplace else).

<<Note: Just started reading this thread now (and haven't gotten past post#5), so if this is redundant, please ignore it.>>

 

[business man]

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this. We really need as many brains on this as we can get. I feel we are funneling down to something, or multiple things now.

The problem is far from being solved but at least now we are being recognized by the power company. Unfortunately even THEY may not be able to help, so that is why I am here, to try to get more intelligent possible solutions.

I am passing-on everything here, as it comes in, over cell phone, because they have no connection at the office.

 

[business man]

At about 8:45pm pst I was just informed by 2 employees working late, that several breakers tripped again, including lights, and they will not reset.

 

[business man]

The latest information regarding the power company is that they are FINALLY seeing how serious the situation is here but they do not have an answer yet.

They are going to power us down at noon tomorrow to change out a main breaker that they say is failing due to these ongoing problems. They are now at least very sympathetic to our situation and have assigned some senior more experienced people to the job.

Tom shaunessy from Powercet, our expert, is now saying that this is so serious that he feels a division of the military should be contacted about it. He doesn't seem like the kind of guy that would overreact, so I am really concerned now.

I can't imagine the losses if I have to move my entire operation to another building at this point, I am not sure if i could even find one. I am not sure if we can keep our servers running long enough to process payroll tomorrow, then there's invoicing, billing, payables, etc.etc. not getting processed now.

WE ARE SLOWLY AND PAINFULLY DIEING HERE
My operations manager, CEO, and computer tech are about ready to collapse from exhaustion. They have not gotten much sleep in the last few weeks.

Local Universities don't really want to talk to us. I think they are concerned about potential liability. We did get one that said if we submit a written report that they would look at it and get back to us. So far they have not done so.

 

[Danger]

Blackadder;
I'm totally out of my league here, but I'm just going to try to clarify something. What you call an RCD seems to be, by your description, what we call a GFI (Ground Fault Circuit Interruptor). Is that correct?

 

[Adder_Noir]

Blackadder;
I'm totally out of my league here, but I'm just going to try to clarify something. What you call an RCD seems to be, by your description, what we call a GFI (Ground Fault Circuit Interruptor). Is that correct?

That's the one mate. In fact that's a better name for it as it better explains what it does.

Business Man,

If you can mate I'd get someone into check for harmonic disturbances as your symptoms tie in very well with the problems they cause. Have you had a chance to check for anything like a drive or something which might be causing it?

Just one more thing that might be causing such things is a backfeed which could be generating a standing wave. I'm scraping my memory banks there but it's one suggestion and an Earth loop of some kind could I suppose be doing it as was mentioned above.

Your best bet mate is to shut down your property and slowly turn things back on again until you hit problems.

I still believe harmonic filters installed at your supply would help enormously if it can be proven that the source of disruption is external to your premises.

 

[Adder_Noir]

I notice Tom's report states that the worry is the High Voltage DC line entering the city near your premises. Surely he means AC doesn't he? Or does he mean DC? I'm not sure what he means there can you check that one out please as it might be something that turns out to be important.

I've dug out my harmonics book and I'll list some of the things it states can be sources of such harmonic disturbances:

1)Transformer Magnetisation Non-linearities (a cracked core?)
2)Motors
3)Arcing devices - Electric Arc Furnaces, Discharge Type Lighting
4)Single phase rectification in D.C. power supplies (could be this one)
5)Three phase current sources (see explanation below)
6)Thyristor controlled drives
7)Inverter Fed A.C. Drives (don't even know what these are)

Three Phase Current Sources:

Had a little to do with these in my last job. A customer required some big pumps (and I mean big) to be run off an A.C. supply without rectification but with a voltage profile being a close match to D.C.. Problem is when you get that big it is either helpful or required (can't remember which) to use a method called twelve-pulse. It's done by taking an input from an A.C. source and routing one through a series of star and delta connections (very clever and totally beyond me) which alters the phase relationship between the two supplies which are then both fed into the motor by the same cable I believe. Reason is you super-impose one A.C. profile onto another in such a way that it reduces the ripple voltage going into the motor. Obviously anything slightly wrong with the phase relationship and you'll get some rather substantial problems, one of which being higher-than-normal supply frequency disturbances and magnitude spikes.

This could also I suppose (again I'm dredging everything up here) be caused by two supplies being connected to each other which are out of phase. Voltage spikes and high frequency disturbances could also occur here.

If I were you I'd get someone to check if your incoming Earth has current flowing in it when your building is powered down tomorrow. You really do need to know if the disturbances are originating in your premises or not.