What's a Transclosure ?

My husband used to work for a school system that a large majority of the schools had transformer vaults with pole type transformers sitting on the floor or on racks. That was the norm back in the 50’s and 60’s and even early 70’s. They had a football stadium with two transclosures. One took the 12,470 down to 4160, and the second took the 4160 to 480. The utility was responsible for the 12,470 enclosure, but the school system was responsible for all the 4160 stuff.

Aaron! I had no idea you had a channel! I used to work with this guy!

When I was in Puerto Rico they had 3 phase dead ended on a building and feeding a transclosure with to transclosure lol. Literally 3 phase primary 4kv dead ended on a cinderblock wall. And open delta bank pole mounted transformers sitting on the ground. No enclose except for a broken 5ft Chain link fence around it. Anyone can walk in there and grab primary etc. I said to my boss are we energizing this or should we isolate it. He said that’s been energized for 30 years like that, heat it up👍 place was wild brother

Don't worry about not posting frequently! Those of us that truly love this content will be here for the next one, even if its a year from now.

I remember one of those located behind a business I worked at about 30 years ago. There was a pole fire across the road and something went horribly wrong. I didn't see it, but I heard it. One door was actually blown off and across the parking lot. No one was hurt. You will be about an hour and a half drive from me. I hope you enjoy your trip. Thank you for taking the time to post another interesting video. Please stay safe, and God bless.

That box needs to be replaced for sure what a eye sore wow

In 2017 I worked for a financial service company and we decommissioned a Wells Fargo branch in Miles City, MT and they had a vault in the basement that had been welded shut so per the SOP we had to open it and confirm it's empty and disable the lock, upon cutting the door and opening the day gate we found it was converted to a transclosure in the 60s and long story short back in the day they cut a hole in the 1920's brick and installed a man door with a hasp so if we would have skipped ahead a few days we would have cut a padlock vs a vault door. Needless to say we crapped ourselves when we noticed. The power company didn't know, CBRE the building owner didn't know, and of course Wells Fargo didn't know. That transformer bank also fed several other large commercial properties. I don't remember seeing any CTs so not sure how they metered. I feel sorry for the gents who get to deal with the PCBs and haul them up the narrow stairs.

I remember as a kid I would walk by these huge boxes and just think for hours what could possibly be inside them. That was back when running all over a city exploring was the only thing you could do.

The buildings you show in de beginning kind of reminds me on good old East German "Plattenbauten". Fast to build houses for many families made from concrete panels

I have been honking support for our striking hydro workers here in Ottawa.

A school I work for built in 1961 has a dedicated transformer "vault room" built into the building. It has three pole mounted transformers just sitting on concrete in open air. That was the first time I've ever seen anything like this. The maintenance staff mistakenly cut off the door padlock and once we opened the door and realized how dangerous it was we called the electric company to put a new lock on the door. The "fireproof" wall and ceiling of that room doesn't instill a lot of confidence in me. All of the secondary feeds passed thru the cinderblock wall into the back of the MDP in the boiler room.

I was sent to Key West in September 2017 to help restore power on all the Navy and Coast Guard bases there. On the Coast Guard Station I encountered a transclosure. It had 6 transformers in it. Each was a 167-kva. They had primary UG elbows on the tops of each primary, instead of the normal open wire connection. The base was still without power but when I oped that thing up and saw that, I took several pictures of it and closed it up. I told them hope for the best when we hot this place back up. The station commander said he hopes it blows sky high. He wnts it gone but no money in the budget. Storms are good sometimes for system improvement. But unfortunately this time when we made other repairs and closed in the main incoming feeder, it held just fine. Oh well, there will be other storms I told him. Bottom line for me was get rid of that thing and get a padmount transformer. Looked like a trap from the movie Saw to me.

One summer during my engineering school years, I worked for an electrical construction contractor which worked for the local electric power utility in the Black Hills of South Dakota. I assembled 3 or 4 trans-closure cabinets as well as several URD underground rural distribution 13 kV primary switching cabinets with the elbows and parking sockets. Another nice video. Keep it up and remember to "point with your elbow" when you have to work close to an energized part. Best wishes from Iowa.

You guys deserve a vacation big time.

I really like your explanations of how and why your grid is so totally different than our Dutch grid.

The municipal system where I live still has a few scattered transclosures and which are likely holdovers from when they had 2400 delta primary (all long since converted to 13.8 Y). I also remember seeing a modern version on a coop system that ran 24.9kV, but this one was specifically for primary metering. It gave me the heebie jeebies looking into the enclosure knowing I was just feet away from energized BARE conductors carrying line voltage! Even my supervisor on this trip was VERY cautious as he inspected the setup to confirm the high-voltage conductors were correctly routed from the incoming potheads through the instrument rack to the outgoing potheads.

That’s a first for me! All lineman never stop learning but I never heard or saw a “transclosure”? Thanks Aaron. 👍🏻👊🏻

Glanced at the title and picture and thought "A goofy name for a shipping container?". Then I saw it was you and put it in the right mindset. lol

Hi I would have thought that those separate transformer on the pole should be replaced with one large pad mount transformer much safer.

Appreciate you filming this type of information - as a commercial engineer designing 480V and below systems, it's nice to see what you utility folks deal with on your side of the transformer!