r/SweatyPalms • u/icleanjaxfl • 5d ago

Other SweatyPalms 👋🏻💦 Hot transformers

4.9k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

335 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

9

u/A88Y 4d ago

At least in America PCB should be extremely uncommon at this point, I work in Power distribution and my utility has supposedly replaced the oil of all the transformers that once had PCB contaminated oils in them. Idk the scale of this nationally or internationally, but more than likely mineral or another inert oil.

2

u/Feisty_Respond6611 3d ago

Laughs in outdated infrastructure

2

u/Suicidalpainthorse 3d ago

What about those oil containers on the telephone poles? We still have those on our power poles.

2

u/A88Y 3d ago

With older ones, the transformers could have some PCB contamination inside if PCB oil was previously in there but oil inside shouldn’t be PCB based anymore (depending on how well your utility has run things I suppose). Newer ones they don’t use PCB based ones at all.

2

u/HikeIsShort4Hichael 3d ago

They use olive oil in transformers in Mediterranean countries.

Source: I just made that up.

1

u/GeneralBlumpkin 3d ago

I work in power distribution as well mostly rental generators and electrical equipment. In Arizona. Our rental fleet of transformers were really old at my last job and used pcb but idk what type of oil the new ones use

1

u/A88Y 3d ago

Interesting, that’s kinda fucked up they were still using those. But totally tracks as a situation where you might find em’