Any IBEW Guys or Gals? (Or Electricians in General)

[DirectDrive]

UA 290 Fitters and Plumbers. So what are you? I was a Supervisor for a control
company for many years. Worked with Reefer and Control Fitters.

Some are divas, smoke reefer and they have "fits" off and on.
At least that what I've heard.

 

[Mister Bisley]

Some really great advice in here. Good luck with everything Kristina

 

[filsonhand]

I'm a 28-yr. veteran refrigeration and (State licensed) boiler mechanic/service-tech working on the big-boy stuff at Intel, Solar World, and all the way down through light-commercial HVAC to piddly reach-in coolers, as well as State licensed to install and troubleshoot controls for said equipment. Short of nuclear stuff, I'll boldly claim there's NOTHING that I can't sit down and figure out what's wrong with it and fix it. I started back in 1990 as a temporary "field helper" working in residential, I was competently (for the most part) running my own jobs after less than 6-mos.

I also manage 5 & 6 figure (annual income) client accounts, sell projects, manage those projects, and run the minions in the HVAC division for the service group of a $100M a year company... I don't do it for free, by a long-shot. That's why you see me occasionally posting pictures of my cool "toys"... at least the ones I don't care that you see.


At work they call me, "The MEAT Whisperer". True story.

.

 

[ZigZagZeke]

That does bring up another suggestion I'll pass along - as an apprentice, I had the opportunity multiple times to learn low-voltage alongside my regular work. Lighting controls, industrial controls, fire alarm, security/access control, generator and HVAC control wiring. All of that is a huge bonus if you get a chance to learn it - which goes back to my point about volunteering. If you're on a job and you know that kind of work is going on, ask if you can get some hands-on with it. When I was 8th term, I ended up running a crew of 4 JW's (yeah, they agreed to work under an apprentice) doing low voltage lighting controls on a new school. No one else had any experience with it, but I did, so the GF asked me to run the crew handling the lighting. It was a great experience and definitely an interesting test of my ability to answer to my JW's while still directing them.

@Kristina, yes, a control technician was the highest pay rate in the power plants. We did everything from switch yard testing, to boiler controls, to computers and distributed control systems. Those last three involved lots of low voltage and controls stuff. As a control tech I hit the max on SS deductions about October every year. Electrician is one of the paths to that job.

 

[ZigZagZeke]

I'm a 28-yr. veteran refrigeration and (State licensed) boiler mechanic/service-tech working on the big-boy stuff at Intel, Solar World, and all the way down through light-commercial HVAC to piddly reach-in coolers, as well as State licensed to install and troubleshoot controls for said equipment. Short of nuclear stuff, I'll boldly claim there's NOTHING that I can't sit down and figure out what's wrong with it and fix it. I started back in 1990 as a temporary "field helper" working in residential, I was competently (for the most part) running my own jobs after less than 6-mos.

I also manage 5 & 6 figure (annual income) client accounts, sell projects, manage those projects, and run the minions in the HVAC division for the service group of a $100M a year company... I don't do it for free, by a long-shot. That's why you see me occasionally posting pictures of my cool "toys"... at least the ones I don't care that you see.


At work they call me, "The Machine Whisperer". True story.

Sounds like we had parallel careers up until the last part. I eventually moved into systems administration for automated meter reading. My metering and substation experience, along with quite a bit of self taught computer networking experience got me there. I too have never found a machine I didn't immediately understand intuitively.

 

[etrain16]

At least you seem to be good with the "Term of Endearment" that we have for your ilk.

To be clear, I'm a full-fledged sparky, the group I work in is mostly half-watts now. I'm one of a handful of JW's that are part of the LV division of our company. That said, I try to keep the mentions of half-watts to a minimum

 

[ZigZagZeke]

I currently work as a maintenance mechanic/machinist at a heat treating shop and I hope that experience can help get me into the industrial side of things as that's what I find the most interesting. Thanks for the tips!

My first job as an instrument tech was at US Steel in the wire mill. We did all kinds of heat treating there. Baling wire has to be soft and piano wire has to be hard.

 

[DirectDrive]

To be clear, I'm a full-fledged sparky, the group I work in is mostly half-watts now. I'm one of a handful of JW's that are part of the LV division of our company. That said, I try to keep the mentions of half-watts to a minimum

I have AEU and they have their in-house half-watters.
They run a tight ship and do well.

 

[ZigZagZeke]

To be clear, I'm a full-fledged sparky, the group I work in is mostly half-watts now. I'm one of a handful of JW's that are part of the LV division of our company. That said, I try to keep the mentions of half-watts to a minimum

As a control tech I worked with everything from millivolts to 13.8KV. Even where control signals were 120V, 24V, 4-20ma, or 0-1ma coming off the secondary side of a VT or a CT through a transmitter, the primary side might be 4160V at 200A. We had to be competent with all of it.

 

[DirectDrive]

I know a guy that got zapped by 277.
Does that count ?

 

[Kristina]

A big thanks to everyone who chimed in with advice and encouragement. I really appreciate it!

 

[Stomper]

Sounds like we had parallel careers up until the last part. I eventually moved into systems administration for automated meter reading. My metering and substation experience, along with quite a bit of self taught computer networking experience got me there. I too have never found a machine I didn't immediately understand intuitively.

I suspect my mechanical aptitude is genetic, as I'm related to the Wright Bros. not too far "removed" (Seriously).

 

[etrain16]

As a control tech I worked with everything from millivolts to 13.8KV. Even where control signals were 120V, 24V, 4-20ma, or 0-1ma coming off the secondary side of a VT or a CT through a transmitter, the primary side might be 4160V at 200A. We had to be competent with all of it.

I was on one project, and industrial project, where I got to learn 12.5KV terminations and splices. I was pretty good at it and faster than the JW's on the job, so they partnered me with their high voltage guy and I did HV terminations for a few weeks. It was fun work, and certainly different from the usual panel makeup.

Only time I saw 4160V was at the PGE Hydroelectric plant at Willamette Falls. We had to pull in some new feeder cables to the fish ladder/counting room next to the falls (under the paper plant) as flood repair after the 1996 flood. It was a very interesting job and I loved looking at that hydro gear in the PGE plant. I've had a chance to see some really cool stuff. We also completely rewired the control system cabling and limit switches, etc. on the Willamette Falls locks - another really interesting project.

 

[etrain16]

I know a guy that got zapped by 277.
Does that count ?

I brushed my hand up against a back-fed 277V neutral on a circuit that was supposed to be dead (no thanks to the back-fed neutral). Everything tested dead with the tracer. Once I brushed it, I immediately pulled my hand up and out of the way and looked up to find a ceiling wire had gone through that hand and out the other side - so I pulled my hand back the other way, which tore the skin open and left me with a nice scar to remember the whole incident. Went to the restroom, pulled out some butterflies, patched myself up and went back to work. These days, there would be an incident review, time off and a bunch of paperwork.

 

[ZigZagZeke]

I suspect my mechanical aptitude is genetic, as I'm related to the Wright Bros. not too far "removed" (Seriously).

After doing genealogy for a few years I've found that about 50% of my ancestors were engineers. My grandfather (see my avatar) was an engineer in an iron foundry.

 

[ZigZagZeke]

I was on one project, and industrial project, where I got to learn 12.5KV terminations and splices. I was pretty good at it and faster than the JW's on the job, so they partnered me with their high voltage guy and I did HV terminations for a few weeks. It was fun work, and certainly different from the usual panel makeup.

Only time I saw 4160V was at the PGE Hydroelectric plant at Willamette Falls. We had to pull in some new feeder cables to the fish ladder/counting room next to the falls (under the paper plant) as flood repair after the 1996 flood. It was a very interesting job and I loved looking at that hydro gear in the PGE plant. I've had a chance to see some really cool stuff. We also completely rewired the control system cabling and limit switches, etc. on the Willamette Falls locks - another really interesting project.

My last job was with PGE. Before that it was PG&E. Typically large pumps, like power plant cooling water pumps in the 200hp+ range have 4160V motors. The conductors would have to be too large at lesser voltages.

 

[ZigZagZeke]

I was on one project, and industrial project, where I got to learn 12.5KV terminations and splices. I was pretty good at it and faster than the JW's on the job, so they partnered me with their high voltage guy and I did HV terminations for a few weeks. It was fun work, and certainly different from the usual panel makeup.

Only time I saw 4160V was at the PGE Hydroelectric plant at Willamette Falls. We had to pull in some new feeder cables to the fish ladder/counting room next to the falls (under the paper plant) as flood repair after the 1996 flood. It was a very interesting job and I loved looking at that hydro gear in the PGE plant. I've had a chance to see some really cool stuff. We also completely rewired the control system cabling and limit switches, etc. on the Willamette Falls locks - another really interesting project.

I was on the overhaul of a 50MW gas turbine (jet engine) generator once and on initial startup they couldn't figure out why it wouldn't put out the full 50MW. We were all standing around scratching our heads and an engineer commented about it putting out full voltage of 13.8KV. I said, "Ooops, this unit runs at 12.5KV." Sure enough, somebody (not me) had calibrated the VT transmitters for 13.8KV full load, like every steam turbine in the plant, not remembering that the gas turbines ran at 12.5KV. So the instrumentation was showing about 3MW short of 50MW, even though the unit was in reality putting out 50MW. Those were the kinds of things that we ran into.

 

[ZigZagZeke]

I brushed my hand up against a back-fed 277V neutral on a circuit that was supposed to be dead (no thanks to the back-fed neutral). Everything tested dead with the tracer. Once I brushed it, I immediately pulled my hand up and out of the way and looked up to find a ceiling wire had gone through that hand and out the other side - so I pulled my hand back the other way, which tore the skin open and left me with a nice scar to remember the whole incident. Went to the restroom, pulled out some butterflies, patched myself up and went back to work. These days, there would be an incident review, time off and a bunch of paperwork.

Would have been an accident report and investigation for sure.

I made two major mistakes during my power plant career. One, I lifted the wrong wire on a running unit and tripped it off line. I joined the 50MW club that day. But I never felt bad about it. Nearly everyone in the shop was a member of a much bigger club, up to 750MW. Two, rewiring a generator panel I moved a conductor from a screw 10' away to a screw closer to all the other terminations. Both the wiring diagram and the 3 line schematic said both screws were common. The wiring diagram was incorrect and by moving the conductor I ended up leaving the common connection for a CT secondary open. Of course, on start up the CT secondary voltage went to ~infinite and the CT went up in smoke. I had some splainin' to do.

 

[DirectDrive]

I know a guy that got zapped by 277.
Does that count ?

He had about half of his body up through the ceiling grid when he got hooked up to a 277 switch leg.
Falling off the ladder is what broke him loose and probably saved his life.

 

[Kristina]

So, I got my letter in the mail yesterday and I'm a little confused on what it means. It says my "ranked interview score" is 82. I'm not sure if that is my interview score or my number on the ranked list. Either way, that's not great and I'm a little disappointed with myself for not having done better . I guess my experience and schooling didn't make up for the fact that I was super nervous during the interview .

Really though, I'm not feeling too bad about it. There were over 900 people that applied and I made it further than most of them. Maybe I'll get the call, maybe I won't. In the mean time I'll just keep doing what I'm doing and I'll be an even better applicant if/when I need to reapply .