Transformer failure causes fire at substation near Reno

What happened

On a Sunday afternoon, a 345 kV substation transformer near the Tracy Generating Station, east of Patrick and outside Reno, had an internal failure that started a fire, NV Energy told local news. Fire crews and NV Energy crews extinguished the fire about three hours later. The utility said there was no direct impact on customers.

Contributing factors

NV Energy attributed the fire to an internal failure of the transformer. The source does not describe why that failure occurred.

Lessons learned

1. A failed high-voltage transformer can ignite even when customer supply is not interrupted, so crews should treat the unit as a fire risk from the first alarm.
2. Joint utility and fire response can limit a substation transformer fire to a few hours when the failed unit can be isolated.
3. Record failure time, extinguishment time and whether supply was affected, so a short news report is not the only account.

Source

kolotv.com