[fche]

A properly wired transfer switch fully cures that risk.

[brudgers]

A couple of my architect friends -- and they are good competent architects who spend the proper portion of their fees to hire competent consulting engineers -- designed an emergency services center a few years ago. The hurricane came - the project was in Florida - the utility cut grid power per protocol and the automatic transfer switch didn't flip to onsite power. Neither did the backup automatic switch.

The person trained to operate the manual switch was on a scheduled vacation (hurricane season in the US is six months it ain't reasonable to prohibit vacations). It took over an hour to get the system back online. Now keep in mind that all of this was with emergency services grade equipment trained professional staff and regular inspections and testing. And everybody wasn't away on vacation by policy.

Proper wiring is a necessary, but not sufficient condition. Power grid failures are many sigma events.

[warfangle]

> The person

And there's the problem.

[brudgers]

The HIL was the backup to the backup.

[HIL]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-in-the-loop

[danielweber]

And even though the solution is right there, power line worker remains the ninth deadliest job in America.

http://www.businessinsider.com/most-dangerous-jobs-in-americ...

[maxerickson]

On trip through Minnesota, I watched a helicopter ferry guys up onto the towers to work (they dangled from the helicopter and then transferred over to the tower: http://www.capx2020.com/ ). They were building the type of infrastructure the news says America doesn't know how to build anymore.

I wonder if energized lines are the big problem.

[tlrobinson]

Workers can safely work on live high voltage lines, if they're wearing a Faraday cage "hot suit" and not grounded: http://youtu.be/LIjC7DjoVe8

[lutorm]

That video is awesome. I've seen a version with much better quality that really gets my acrophobia going... ;-)

[fche]

(It's likely there are many -other- hazards to power line working, beyond presence or absence of transfer switches at on-site generators.)

[danielweber]

If you are a lineman, you are three times more likely to die from electrocution than from a fall.

(They die from electrocution at 35x the normal population rate, while the death from falls is 5x the normal population rate.)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1568699/pdf/envh...

That's just fatalities, ignoring the other dangers like getting your arms blown off.

[spydum]

True, but bewary of automated transfer switches. I have seen DC's fail due to ATS's not doing their job. This can be pretty dangerous for a lineman/fire rescue if your particular ATS fails to switch...