Chesham FTTC Cab 11

Hi,

Lost sync late Thursday night, down until 8.15am, then up until 4pm yesterday afternoon. Took a walk to the cab and caught an Openreach electrician changing the batteries. They lasted until midnight then down again until 10.30 this morning. Now down again for last half hour.

The cabinet had works done about a month ago which I think would have been a new earth rod (hole dug next to the FTTC cab). Openreach electrician told me someone somewhere in Openreach has decided to disconnect the mains power to this cab and 60 others spread across the county as their earthing isn’t up to whatever standard in the middle of a pandemic. The cab has been there nearly 10 years - why choose now to disrupt service or not arrange to sort the issue properly?

Anyone know what’s going on and are there really 60 other cabs with the same problem?

Because there are routine power inspections of the cabinets on a 5 year cycle,.If they come across a dangerous installation such as a defective earth reading, the only immediate course of action maybe to disconnected the supply.
It's not inconceivable that earlier works were not completed satisfactorily and have been repeated elsewhere , leaving electrically unsafe cabinets live. It wouldn't be the 1st time.

Edited by witchunt (Sat 27-Jun-20 20:47:07)

Openreach have not stopped working and have carried on, as best they can, with business was normal.

An unsafe cabinet should be dealt with as soon as practicably possible - pandemic it no pandemic. Loss of service will not directly kill anyone, whereas 230v could easily do so.

Cycling batteries shows that OR are trying to maintain service.

And believe me, 400v from a cabinet due to a badly installed or connected PSU is not much fun.

Thanks witchunt.

Still down now - 4.5 hours and counting, is this normal? Aren’t the batteries supposed to be swapped fairly promptly? Would you know when the problem is going to be resolved properly? The Openreach electrician said the new earth from the work a month or so ago hadn’t been connected inside the cab.

They will try and set up a rota to change the batteries during an extended power outage, but sometimes they cannot resource all changes required to maintain service, especially if there has been a spike in faults which there probably has been due to the recent weather conditions.
I would expect the main issue to be resolved promptly due to the ongoing issues and expense of changing batteries constantly

Trouble is that if 60 cabinets or so in the area have the same problem, both manpower and sufficient fully charged batteries could be hard to source if each cabinet is needing them every couple of days.

Suggestion was there’s 60 cabs in this position across the country, not in the same area and also this was a new decree by a middle manager ‘trying to make a name for himself’.

If there’s a genuine safety issue then fair enough but if it’s a case of ‘health and safety gone mad’ then the timings not great when we’re reliant on our connections for work.

Would have thought the mains power supplies would be the same as for nearby domestic properties and be TNS or TNCS/PME or are they all made TT needing earth rods?

You said "county" in your OP .

So I did - so much for my proofreading skills!

Connection currently up, came up at 3.47am - expecting it to fall over again about midday....

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

both manpower and sufficient fully charged batteries could be hard to source if each cabinet is needing them every couple of days.

I'm sure OpenReach wish it was every couple days per cabinet.

Each cabinet needs a battery change 3 times a day as they last roughly 8 hours (time is dependant on number of users connected to the cabinet).

I read the OP's post the same as you and assumed 60 local cabinets.
At 3 battery changes a day that's a fair bit of man hours

The problem at weekends and bank holidays is it will all be on a callout basis, and there are only so many hours you can work a week.

Still up, 12 hours 20 minutes. Don’t want to tempt fate but that’s got to be beyond the battery duration? Batteries were lasting 8 1/2 hours almost to the minute.

Info Plusnet had from Openreach was would be resolved by 5.46am - wasn’t clear if that was just another battery change or a full fix. If it’s now fully resolved I guess there must be some night crews who do this stuff? On the rare occasions in the past when the connection drops it’s usually sometime shortly after midnight and generally less than an hour. Maybe that’s the sort of time extra line cards are fitted or even side pods (cab has a fairly recent side pod)?

Headend work is often done after midnight. Cabinet work is done
during the day unless it's a major outage or something like a cabinet relocation changeover.

There is the possibility they have a battery trailer or DC generator hooked up.

Just been to have a look - nothing external connected to the cab, all looks completely normal so hopefully that’s the issue fully resolved.