Got Electricity…?

That particular line is a 94 mile 500,000 volt line between Hoover Dam and the Lugo substation near L.A. An SF6 circuit breaker had failed, it was carrying the 33.3MVAR line reactor magnetising current for the test. ~100amps. The line carries ~2,000 amps under load.

You can find more great pictures and videos of arcs here:

http://205.243.100.155/frames/longarc.htm

I used to work in a steelmill. we used an electric arc furnace to melt scrap steel down to be recast into bar products. our furnace transformer was supplied with 34,500 volts which was stepped down to approximately 600 volts AC and would pull about 54,000 amperes at the beginning of the melt. you can hear the charecteristic 60 hertz hum of the arc, sounds just like the electric furnace at the end of a melt cycle.