Diary of a generator operator— Part 3

Protocol: IN THIS INSTALLMENT of “Diary of a Generator Operator,” I pick up the story of how the analytical tools I learned in IATSE Local 481’s Training, Education, and Classification (TEC) program, enabled me to stay one step ahead of a looming disaster on the set of a major motion picture. From what I learned, I was able to isolate the problem to a bad piece of 4/0 cable in our neutral run, but not until several 18ks failed, and a 1400 A generator blew up. The bad piece of 4/0 created a resistive neutral that turned our three-phase distro into a voltage divider circuit where the voltage of each phase floated in an inverse relation to its load. As demonstrated in Parts 1 and 2, a bad piece of 4/0 cable has the potential to bring even the largest production to a crashing halt. In this part, I explore what preventive steps can be taken to identify a resistive neutral at the outset and avoid these hazards. Now, back to my diary.