overbergerc
Member
I've been encouraged to post the details of a direct lighting strike to the 240V SP feed to my garage (and house) while my 7 month old SL Leaf was plugged in to my EVSE 16A adapter. This occurred on the morning of January 29th at 5:00 am during an extremely rare mid winter thunderstorm here in SW Michigan (Kalamazoo). The strike hit the 8 gauge 4 conductor UV insulated overhead cable (about a 100' overhead run to the garage, grounded and circuit protected w/a 40A breaker at the primary panel in the house and a secondary panel in the garage (40A breaker) right where the cable ran through a ceramic insulator on the corner of the houses before it dropped to a weatherhead/conduit feed into the house. It split the insulation on the entire length of cable run to the garage. At the point of contact, it pushed all 4 insulated conductors away from each other to a distance of about 8". It appeared as if someone put a football in the middle of the cable and formed the 4 individual conductors around the football and removed the football. I'll attach a foto at a later date. No melting or burning at this point in the circuit. The only tripped breakers were the primary service feed to the house panel and a 120V circuit (1 side) downstream from the 240V garage breaker. No wire damage downstream from the distribution panel in the garage and the EVSE seems to be OK (green light).
Not so with all the cabled Ethernet (cat 5e) in the house, switches, routers, NAS, UPS, 2 TVs, DVD, BT transceivers, Vonage VOIP router, all ATT Uverse VIdOIP boxes, VidOIP router, X-10 system, garage door openers (2), VDSL ATT line, Coax RG cable (100Mb internet service), and the VDSL/Video over IP in the house....AND the Leaf. Probably more that I haven't found yet. The "spark" jumped across from the power line to the adjacent cat 5e and ATT DSL cable to feed into the home networks.
Stand by for chapter 2. The Leaf adventure is by far the most interesting part of this story. Needless to say, Cole Nissan in Kalamazoo has only sold 6 or so Leafs. They have 1 trained Leaf technician (who has been great.....thank you John !) You won't believe the parts horror story I have to tell. Most of the folks at this dealership have been great...but not all.
I need to go start Sunday dinner for the family. I'm the chef at our house !!
Many thanks to Phil and Mark for their advice so far. We are lucky to have them on this forum.
Chuck O
Not so with all the cabled Ethernet (cat 5e) in the house, switches, routers, NAS, UPS, 2 TVs, DVD, BT transceivers, Vonage VOIP router, all ATT Uverse VIdOIP boxes, VidOIP router, X-10 system, garage door openers (2), VDSL ATT line, Coax RG cable (100Mb internet service), and the VDSL/Video over IP in the house....AND the Leaf. Probably more that I haven't found yet. The "spark" jumped across from the power line to the adjacent cat 5e and ATT DSL cable to feed into the home networks.
Stand by for chapter 2. The Leaf adventure is by far the most interesting part of this story. Needless to say, Cole Nissan in Kalamazoo has only sold 6 or so Leafs. They have 1 trained Leaf technician (who has been great.....thank you John !) You won't believe the parts horror story I have to tell. Most of the folks at this dealership have been great...but not all.
I need to go start Sunday dinner for the family. I'm the chef at our house !!
Many thanks to Phil and Mark for their advice so far. We are lucky to have them on this forum.
Chuck O