At 10:17 a.m. 23/12/2006 +1300, Lesley Walker wrote:
The reason the outage lasted "so long" (I've heard) was that when they fixed the obviously broken bit they discovered the cables had been stretched and there were breakages underground. I don't see how they could have known for sure that had happened until the got the main break fixed. I don't imagine it would make sense to call in the guys to do the digging just to have them hang around doing nothing until you know they're needed.
you often have to have them around for a while and dig several times, as you may have to locate several faults. Remember that a fault location gives you a break at xx.x% of cable length or so many meters out from one end. Finding that actual point is often tricky and the +/- error can actually be several meters - typically a road width in a short cable. In a long one like this, several hundred meters. These days you seem to have to wait a lifetime for new poles. In the old days utilities kept a stock of poles "in the yard" as a cheap form of insurance. Accountants don't like that now. I've heard horror stories from the snow down south this year, that they ran out of poles several times.