A fire at a PG&E substation near 50th Avenue and Coliseum on Sunday afternoon has been extinguished, announced the Oakland Fire Department.
At 1 p.m., firefighters were called to the substation after crews noticed gray and brown smoke coming from inside the yard.
Firefighters said they noticed a transformer actively burning in the yard. The fire has been extinguished as of 2:30 p.m.
Over 50,000 customers in Oakland and Alameda, including the Oakland International Airport, are without power.
PG&E determined that estimated power restoration is 6:25 p.m.
PG&E said they have to assess the equipment to determine the cause of the fire.
Routine sampling of oil from transformers usually spots a problem long before failure.
There’s internal transformer pressure, temperature and oil level sensors. Question is were those sensors being monitored real time by a PLC?
Wonder what failure mode was.
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This video is NOT of today’s failure, shows catastrophic failure.
White cloud is oil from inside transformer just prior to ignition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0TSoFv3CPw