The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

I've had a 'temporary' portable transformer in my yard since an outage back on Labor Day.  PSO seems to have forgotten about it.  I've tried navigating their voice menu system - and I won't go into that.  I've sent emails via their customer service page.  I even stopped a crew working on the street, and they said they'd put in a ticket on it.  Yeah, right.

Does anyone have a contact with a real, live person - you know, a carbon based life form that seems to inhabit this planet - a person I can talk to about this transformer?  I'm entertaining fantasies of disconnecting it myself and pushing it out in the middle of the street.

During the ice storm of '07, we had a problem with a downed line and local transformer.   I got no response from PSO until I threatened to climb a pole and cut a line to a street light.  They were there within 2 hours.

Good Luck!

Tell them there is smoke coming from it.....

What, there's a transformer sitting on the ground? Sounds like a downed power line to me! ;)

It sounds immensely dangerous.  Could the lines be touched by people or animals? (please don't try).
Can you post a picture?

If you have underground service, your transformer is always on the ground.

*clears throat*

PM me your contact info.

Long story short...the electrical service to the house comes in on two 'hot' legs and also has a neutral return line.  One leg went out, so the dryer turned but didn't heat.  Most of the kitchen was out, as was the AC.  It was Labor Day weekend.  When I finally figured out it was outside on the PSO line, I called them and a tech showed up in about an hour!

But it seems they've forgotten their equipment:

(http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7012/6777972913_ba931a9881.jpg)

So you have 480V going right to your meter can via the existing underground wiring?
I didnt know they did that, but it seems a much more elegant way than having a primary line just dangling there.

I believe that it's actually an autotransformer that makes up the missing leg through some sort of electrical engineering magic.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r24691376-So.-I-lost-a-110V-Leg-last-night-

Be glad it wasn't the neutral that failed. If your power usage happens to not be well balanced between the legs when that happens, the voltage rise on one of the hot legs can do a lot of damage. And when you're going around turning off breakers to stop all the electronics from smoking, you may just unbalance things the other way and fry the other half of your stuff.

I didn't measure the voltage with my meter.  Instead, I used a voltage probe from Klein Tools.  It senses AC from 50 to 1000 volts.  This tool is about the size of a fat fountain pen and it's handy around the house.

It's probably easier than fixing the real problem.

But they did fix the real problem.  One of the hot legs was broken somewhere between the meter and the PSO transformer in a neighbor's yard.  A crew arrived to dig up the yard and the line a few days after the initial outage.  They did a lot of digging, eventually making a trench through the back yard.  It was deep enough that they released Godzilla and he wreaked havoc on Owasso. 

OK, I'm out of ideas.

Typical AEP BS.  Some of you have seen my rantings about how they handle tree maintenance.  Well, there was something else also.

In 2005, when I first moved back into my childhood home to help care for my mother, I arrived to a huge, gutted backyard and my north fence in the backyard torn down opening it to the property to the north.  What evidently happened was that AEP needed to replace a transformer in my backyard, but no-one was there at the time (my Dad, who was the former only resident in the house, by this time had essentially moved to his sisters).

In doing so, they gained access with the bucket truck to the neighbor to my north (who had frontage to the road from their backyard corner lot), and just took the fence down and rolled the truck into the yard to get to the faulty transfomer.  Fair enough, they corrected an issue that I was concerned with anyway (that transformer was old as I was and aerial lines as you know, suck).

What ensued was a nasty back and forth phone tag battle for about six months.  My neighbor's yard was torn up as well, but AEP within two weeks corrected that by putting down sod, and they did replace the section of fence they had taken down.  What the did not do was to repair my back yard.  I went round and round with these jackasses for six months to get them to come out and fix my damn lawn.  In the end, they wound up, instead of re-sodding the area, by turning over the dirt they'd jacked up and planting fescue seed!  I decided at that point I was going to let them have it.  I did wind up getting 50 dollars off one of my electric bills for that, but the principle of it really pi$$ed me off.

And the next two years was me fighting about the limb maintenance around the lines on the easement of the property.

Msg sent

Get a real voltmeter.  They are cheap.  Just make sure that is says 750VAC/1000VDC and Cat III on the front.  (Cat II at the VERY minimum!!)  I got one at Harbor Freight when they opened a new store in Norman a couple years ago for about $5.00.  Normal price should be less than $25 even from someone like Lowes or Home Depot.

Second, you are probably ok through the winter with that rig until air conditioning season.  Or is that stuff even still connected??


The two legs coming in are 110 vac each, and a return line - no 480 vac anywhere there.  The green box on the ground has the main transformer for usually 4 houses.  The primary into that box is gonna be something over 7,000 volts and 3 phase going through the neighborhood.  The transformer primary should connect from one of those phases to ground to get the 220 vac single phase into the house (two 110's).  Sometimes a single phase transformer will be connected from phase to phase, but I don't think PSO does that for most residential - another "can't remember" for sure.

I believe this issue is resolved now.

Yep.  Someone came by to retrieve the service saver today.  I started work at 4AM and when I arrived at home I fell asleep within a few minutes.  Voices outside the bedroom window woke me for a moment, but I was asleep again almost immediately.  When nap time ended, I went outside to find the equipment was gone.

My thanks to you and all others who offered to help.

TNF...."Works for You"..... ;D

I compared my gas bill and PSO going back several years. Last December (2010) and Jan. (11) were on par with this year which has been substantially warmer. I hear that across the country our power companies have been charging higher rates despite Nat Gas being at historic low prices.... anyone know why?

Profit?

That's called push profit.... unjustifiable.

Never said it was justified.  I assumed it was the same as gas prices going up while oil goes down.  Because they can.

The utility rates are regulated and gas charges are separated, with those charges based on projected prices and contracted rates. Neither get to just choose prices at will.

I use a Fluke 87 at work and a knockoff at home.  There's a couple of analog meters out in the garage, too, including a Simpson 260 that's still a fine meter despite its age.  But a simple voltage probe is a convenient go/no-go tool, much like the old neon lamp probes but without the electrocution hazard.  I still have one of those probes that I picked up over seas.  I think they're illegal for sale here. 

I have a 260 and a 270 that my dad left to me.  I also repaired and calibrated Simpson 260s (and many other makes and models up through rack mount digital meters) in the Cal Lab in the Navy.  The only real problem with the Simpsons was when someone measured 110VAC on the RX1 scale.  The first time it wasn't too bad because the fuse protected it.  The second time, after the 1A fuse was replaced with a 10A slow blow fuse (unauthorized of course), the meter movement needed to be replaced.

Nothing better than a 260!  Used to have one, had a very hard life, so got rid of the pieces...  have been keeping an eye out for another one at garage sales and antique shops.

110 on R - yep.  Toaster.


I have an old 8020B that has been great for a long, long time.  Also have a couple of cheapies for knocking around the garage so don't mess up the good one.

Did they not have some sort of recent adjustment to pay for power plant upgrades or some such thing?  I've noticed my electric bill has been higher this winter over last winter.

We used to get surplussed 260s and Triplett meters from AA when I was in the radio club.  We sold them at the hamfest for a few bucks.  I suspect most are gone now, and only a few are left in the shops.  Still, you might find some at the hamfest later this year.

How much do you want one?

http://www.simpsonelectric.com/index.asp?p=Products&id=30&sid=38&ss=31
http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/wwg/search.shtml?searchQuery=simpson+260&op=search&Ntt=simpson+260&N=0&sst=subset

I'm even cheaper than you.  I am looking for the $10 to 20 dollar version used.

New things recently:
- Contracted with the other power plant in Jenks for added capacity
- smartgrid pilot program
- demand-reduction programs (like those PSO rebates every HVAC company is advertising)

Keep in mind also that we had a refund coming back for months on each bill which made actual bills lower for awhile.

In case anyone still has complaints about PSO...it could be much worse!  You could have OG&E in central part of the state.

Have had a low voltage situation - they are delivering 103 volts to the outlet, rather than 120 volts.  Two separate electrician visits have occurred on site in the last 2 1/2 weeks - both evaluated the transformer and said that it is way too small for the application (multiple energy consuming air conditioning units) - by more than half...is 25kva, should be at least 60kva - and appears to be in process of failing completely.  Air conditioners won't operate at that voltage.  Afternoon temperatures indoors that are higher than the voltage delivered to the outlet!!  Their engineering department is said to have evaluated it and is said to agree.  And yet, no transformer replacement.

Everyone has been friendly, agreeable, and say they want to help.  But I guess a couple dozen consumers just don't really add up to enough for them to get excited enough to actually fix the problem.

If they can just drag it out until mid September, no problem...probably won't need air conditioning any more anyway!  

Wishing for PSO, yours truly,
H