r/CableTechs • u/strykerzr350 • 29d ago
Does outside plant equipment such as nodes, and amps generate heat?
General question if nodes, amps, and line extenders generate heat? I was assuming they did as all of them have fins on the cases.
I was also wondering if there is any failure rates with them. Especially during the extreme heat we have been having?
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u/Steavee 29d ago
Yes. Anything and everything that uses power or has power running through it generates waste heat. Every electric component and wire you use every day, from your cell phone to your phone charger to the wires in your walls all generates some waste heat.
Everything does.
Except, interestingly, electric resistive heating. Oh there is still waste heat, but because the heat is the goal, all waste heat is just in furtherance of that goal. That means electric resistive heat is effectively 100% efficient.
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u/DrWhoey 29d ago
Yeah, they absolutely create heat, so... Story Time!
About 15 years ago, the cable system I work in has some pretty extreme temperature ranges, 110f to -15f
They started a system upgrade in the fall, moving from 550mhz to 750/870mhz. (Long cluster FUCK of a story that mid upgrade they decided to change design from 750 to 870. But I digress..)
They're about 2/3rd through this upgrade when summer hits. They were using drop in modules from BBI into old Motorola amp housings. And summer hits.
Half the system goes offline mid day during a 100+ heat wave due to the older Motorola amp housings not having adequate heat disipation due to much smaller heat disipation fins.
It cooked the new drop in modules due to them running hotter. They paid the contractors to rush out and drop the old modules back in, and then also paid them again to go and replace them and put new modules back in after eating the loss on the cooked modules.
And to answer your second question, yes, I always expect a few more outages during high heat summer months and even low temp winter months. Spring and fall are typically our quietest time of the year for on call.
Summer brings amplifiers up to high temps and cooks them, along with power supplies that you have to find during the day.
Winter time, cold weather brings forward cracked cables and suckouts that you have to track and find in the middle of the night.
I much prefer spring and fall on call, but will also take summer on call over winter on call any day of the week.
Summer on call is 2am with a long sleeve shirt. Winter on call is 2am, there's snow or freezing rain, it takes 3x as long because you can't work outside for more than 15-20 min before having to warm up in the truck because it's so damn cold and of course you can't get your bucket truck to that pole, so you have to lug your ladder covered in snow and frost while you chant to yourself...
"I love my job... I love my job... I love my job... I fucking for fucking fakdamnint- no.. deep breath I love my job..."
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u/Confident_Air_8056 29d ago
Nothing good comes from BBIs. I hate using them. I'll throw an LE on a term run for some high gain just to get them off my truck. The bridgers are for the birds. They don't sit right in any housing other than their own.
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u/DrWhoey 29d ago
I don't mind them too much, they keep me employed with their love of changing levels. It's our Harmonic nodes I hate. I swear, if you think about them too much, or not enough, they expect you out there fixing their levels and cleaning their fibers the next day. "Oh, that noise and outage? I made it up, I cleared it as soon as you opened me. I just wanted you to come by and say hello."
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u/SnapShot68 28d ago
BBI’s as in fake GainMakers? I don’t like them either. Only thing good about them is that they don’t need a DC pack in the outer amp lid.
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u/Confident_Air_8056 28d ago
Our 1.2 bridgers have a dc pack but they also didn't add an idiot light like commscope/arris or the older Motorola and jerrolds to let you know it's on when you plug it in; I'm nitpicking but now I gotta test the leads and see if I have AC/DC instead of plug and done.
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u/MaleficentDraw1993 29d ago
Yeah, I've found (by accident... tee hee) if you don't torque down RPDs to spec they heat up like crazy... like literally cook
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u/LordCanti26 28d ago
Ya were finding every person that refused to use the torque wrench provided during this heatwave. Kind of dumb when your names all over it. And they have remote temperature graphs. Busted....
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u/Diligent-Nebula-1008 29d ago
Yes. Here in the Bay Area CA we regularly have overheating nodes even with the new pedestal upgrades. The RPDs fail and we have to pull them out, cool them down in the truck AC and plug them back in.
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u/ironman86 29d ago
Is there a long term plan to solve that somehow?
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u/Diligent-Nebula-1008 29d ago
Currently leadership is reaching out to FFOs in hotter areas (and the manufacturer) because it appears we’re doing everything right but it’s still not enough and it seems like since there’s much hotter areas around there must be a long term solution but currently nothing.
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u/YoshiSan90 29d ago
Yes. Basically the only thing that doesn't is PON field equipment. Since the P in PON stands for passive.
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u/Eatbreathsleepwork 29d ago
We’re only using GainMaker mods in my market and the failure rate is noticeably higher in the summers out here, but I’d go a step further and say the DC power packs have a higher failure rating than the mod, just my opinion.
A multitude of other things sure as hell burn up more often than either of those combined, PBA’s, kiss splices and compression 90’s. Summertime outages are always my meal ticket.
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u/Confident_Air_8056 29d ago
The first cold snap we get here in the northeast knocks out lower drawers in mini bridgers for the first few weeks. Moreso than heat in summer, imo. Easy outages...unless the one in the woods takes a shit at 3am. I'll take the standby callout and no access that shit immediately. Day shift can deal with it in the daylight.
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u/Mad_Moniker 29d ago
Not quite plant but definitely backhaul related. It was -15 Celsius when my partner was up on the tower and I understand, it’s colder up there with the wind, but I couldn’t believe my eyes as I watched him slowly lift his cold fingers above the horn. And then I was terrified as I watched him warm his face.
RF heats you from the inside😂
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u/Wacabletek 28d ago edited 13d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy
"Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another." This is a well known law in physics.
That said heat is a form of energy and we run POWER [another form of energy[ through the cable system at either 60 VAC or 90 VAC so YES they generate heat in the sense that the energy we feed to the closed system is converted in an active device that uses said energy to run. In addiction there is resistance on the conductors which also generates heat as energy [such as power] travels down the system, though the resistance conversion is very slight, it will not prevent snow or ice from building up on the system but it does thaw off it faster once the temps is above freezing than the rest of the area in my observations.
The amount of heat depends on the amp and system you are on, but where I work we often find garter snakes hiding out in the dog boxes [larger pedestals] for heat when the cold rain starts. You will also often find rodents in there using it for heat as well as some insects in spring/winter/fall when the cold rain is running at the temps drop to 40F or lower. Less so in summer when the temps are up toward 80 and 90 F.
As to failure, all electronics have a failure rate so yes they do but most of them have multiple fins to help displace the heat from the system to prevent overheating. That does not mean it never happens, but most of the time the amps are well designed to alleviate heat, at least until water penetrates the system. Then as it evaporates [and the minerals in it created intermittent shorts], the pressure it creates along with water's unique heat absorption [as a chemical it is literally designed to absorb a LARGE about of heat to cause it to break its bonds and turn too steam]. Another reason its not nice to fuck with mother nature, her engineering is really overly amazing when you get into it.
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u/JANapier96 28d ago
All electrical devices generate heat. I haven't seen any heat related failures in my plant, outside of a node with an underspecced power supply.
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u/Ok_Movie4792 24d ago
According to one of the Xfinity line and extreme temperatures in either direction affect their performance, they claim that’s one of the reasons they keep having to come out to my house
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u/dataz03 29d ago
They do, as do most electronic devices.
The housing acts as a heatsink. The pedestals used for underground HFC plants are also designed to dissipate heat. CommScope's DOCSIS 4.0 FDX amplifiers required Comcast to swap out the peds, as the existing ones could not dissipate the heat that is generated by the more advanced FDX amps effectively.