YouTube

Opening Capacitor in a Substation

2026-01-21 · 00:00 UTC ·Bobsdecline - Lineman blogger ·6 min read

Brief

This video provides a detailed walkthrough of capacitor bank maintenance procedures at a small 69kV substation, offering practical insights into electrical grid operations and safety protocols. The lineman explains that when one phase of a three-phase capacitor bank fails, it creates power factor correction imbalances that require shutting down the entire bank. The work involves using specialized tools including a load buster (which uses spring tension to safely break electrical loads) and 12-foot hot sticks for maintaining safe distances from energized equipment. The video demonstrates proper safety procedures including equipment inspections, hand positioning techniques for better leverage and control, and the importance of maintaining clearances when working around live 69kV and 12kV systems. The lineman also explains the infrastructure setup of smaller substations that rely on basic field equipment rather than enclosed switchgear buildings, and shows the practical challenges of working in coastal environments where salt air causes equipment to seize. The content provides valuable insight into the hands-on technical work required to maintain electrical grid reliability.

Why it matters

Lineman demonstrates capacitor bank maintenance at a 69kV substation after center phase failure:

Key details

  • [failure] Center capacitor blown, creating power factor imbalance requiring all three phases to be opened
  • [procedure] Uses load buster with 12-foot hot stick, maintaining maximum distance and testing spring tension before each operation
  • [safety] Follows strict protocols: glove/stick expiry checks, visual inspection of insulators, proper hand positioning on tools
  • [equipment] Small substation uses basic field equipment (oil recloser, voltage regulators, capacitor bank) without switchgear building
Source evidence

title: Opening Capacitor in a Substation
author: Bobsdecline - Lineman blogger
publication: YouTube
published: 2026-01-21T00:00:00
sourceurl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ2of4mmng

word_count: 1294

Hey guys, it's been a few days since I've had time to do any editing or posting a video. I'm just getting in the door right now. I was at a substation and the subt noticed a capacitor bank where the center phase is blown. So, we got that all on camera. We're going to cover that in this video. Kind of go over my thought process as as we're doing that switching. It's a fairly quick video, but make sure you stay to the end of this one. the last at the end of the video, I'm going to show you guys a clip from last night's call. It's a pretty pretty neat one. It was a very unique situation. So, I want you guys to watch that clip when I first go up in the air and use my camera to analyze the situation and you'll see some arcing crazy wind last night. Let me know what you think is going on with this arcing equipment call. So, I'm pretty excited to get that one edited up and out to you guys this weekend. If you're not subscribed, make sure you do so you don't miss that coming out. Other than that, let's get into it. All right, guys. So, we're at one of our smaller substations. Somebody on site noticed the center capacitor was open, which can really mess with power factor on the system if there's two phases being corrected and one that's not. I'm not going to get a whole lot into power factor in this video, but it's it's just best to open all three. So, my first step is I already checked the expiry date on my gloves and did the glove test. Same with the sticks. I was just checking the expiry date on the sticks right here. I'm laying my AB stick along right alongside my boom. I always preach that it's not a good habit to hang your sticks from the bucket. Not that it's overly dangerous, but eventually they're going to, you know, knock up against something, hook a wire, fetch up. You might end up having a stick fall to the ground. So, when I put it right in line with my boom like that, especially where I've got 12 ft of stick, I just don't have to worry about it. So, as we guide my bucket into the substation, I do take a moment to really look things over. This is 69,000 volt substation. That's 12,000 volts pretty much over my head or will be shortly. So you like any job, you want to check all your insulators out. Make sure there's no bad connections. Make sure nothing's going to start arcing. And same with capacitor bank. You can see right there, the center cutout is open. And that center one's blown. So I have received instruction from my dispatcher already to open the remaining capacitors and lift the taps as well. I didn't necessarily have to remove the taps, but somebody would would have had to at one point, so might as well do it while I'm here. We also have to tag the structure with a conditions abnormal tag indicating that that center capacitor is blown. You can kind of see the fuse tail dangling there. It's important to remember when you're opening capacitor bank to use a load buster. and using your load buster before you choose you must give it a a dry run test it out. So I was just checking for spring tension there and then you fully operated to make sure that the spring releases which actually breaks the load. So you want to do that test before each and every operation using the full length of my 12T stick. We're keeping our distance as much as possible. And you want to grab on the opposite side from you of the cutout. Also, you don't really want to jam that load buster in between the cutout and the pole. There's just too many second points of contact. So, we open that up and you can see I did another little dry run, a little spring test on that. And again, for this side, this one's a little bit trickier. You'll see the door actually jumps out right after it opens. And that's because my I'm at the full reach of my boom right now. I can't extend out any further. So, it's just a bit of an awkward position. But the the capacitor or the load buster did fully operate. Those little three cans you're seen on the ground, those are voltage regulators. This tiny little substation doesn't have a switch gear building. So, we use some of the more basic equipment as it goes out into the field being uh oil recloser, voltage regulators, and a capacitor bank. So, next up, we're just removing the tap clamps. You can see here though, they're actually in pretty good shape. Again, using the full length of the stick. If you notice the placement of my right hand, I grab right over top of the little brass trigger. That just gives you a bit of a better grip. I'll show you when I remove the last tap why that is. But you also want to keep a downward pressure on the tap clamp in case there is any load. Perhaps the lightning arresttor is leaking or something. There's a little bit of a draw. So you keep that downward pressure to keep good contact until you're ready to fully remove that tap clamp. I'm just kind of looking at the leads there, whether it's safe to just leave them dangling or if I should try to tap them on to to a ground or something. But there's enough clearance and there's no way those are going to jump up into the live stuff. You can see I also as I lowered them, I lowered it down and away from the cutout that still had the live lead on the top side. You can see there when you grab it, I was able to keep a downward pressure with my right hand on on the sliding mechanism and then use my left hand to push the stick up in place to lock that tap clamp down in for better control as opposed to leaving it extended out of the end of the the grab ball a little bit. So, this last one here, bit of a stretch. Gonna use my full stick. And I'm gonna quite literally lose use the entire stick here. Keeping both hands below the trigger. But where the stick's round, I just don't have a whole lot of leverage. It's it's hard to twist it when you're just holding on to the round part. So placing your hand around the trigger point, it gives you just a better grip and a little bit of leverage cuz those those tap clamps, they're not put on overly tight, but they do slowly start to seize on, especially with with all the salt air. We're very close to the coast here and dropping that remaining riser. The last step I had to do is place the tag. Our locks getting into our substations are hard to operate in the winter. So, I kind of tried to cheat here and drop that down in behind the switch number. And it actually worked pretty good, but I wasn't happy with it. So, I did get out of the truck and go through in the sub and lock it down in there real tight. That's pretty much it for this one, guys. But check out this clip from last night and let me know what you think. Heat. Heat.