The electric utility uses a range of equipment to deliver power to households and businesses. The requirements for businesses and households are generally low voltage (less than 750 volts) but the utility has to step down the voltage prior to it reaching the service panel. Industrial settings may require higher voltages but the limit for most houses is 240 Volts and that is usually what you find inside a common electrical panel, two conductors a ground and a return. Amperages vary but most households use services in the 100 to 200 amp range.
All the equipment that is used by the utility company carries voltages that are much higher than the usual business or household will require, higher voltages offer efficiencies to the utility. Typically the voltage on the power pole behind your house is 14,400 volts. This is stepped down by an transformer, usually connected directly to the pole, it looks like a steel can.
The grid that is electrified by the utility includes power lines, elevated transformers and ground pad transformers. The possibilities for a stray voltage incident extend to grounding wires, guy wires, the poles, the masts that support wires and just about anything not made of a very good insulator that might come into contact with the secondary or the primary. Primary voltages can be much much higher than the secondary.
In my line of work we require 3 phase, 120/208 Volt, 600 AMP service. The electric utility delivers 14,400 Volts, usually to a ground pad transformer right outside a facilty. That ground pad transformer turns the 14,400 volts into a 120/208 600AMP service, the transformer is safe unless there is a stray voltage incident.
This is where the danger lies, in contacting anything that is energized by the primary or secondary, it will be the last thing you do. I am not mandating change, I am telling you outright that even though the percentage of a stray voltage incident are very very low there is a 100% chance of dying if you are involved in such an incident with the voltages used in the distribution grid.
A cool looking magnetic decal attached to a transformer that is stepping down 14,400 volts is for the most part perfectly safe. The chance of the transformer case being energized is probably even smaller than you think it is, it is more than uncommon, it is very rare, I am not arguing that.
You can fall down a cliff and survive, you can get bitten by a snake and survive, spider bites are a walk in the park, you can get in a serious automobile accident and walk away, you can dive into dark water and come back up - what you cannot do is contact the voltage that is distributed by the electric utility and survive.
Any cache that is hidden on equipment owned by a power utility is hidden without permission in a location that is for the most part safe, but when it isn't safe because a stray voltage incident has developed, it is invariably fatal.
I mentioned that the first step for geocachers is simply awareness. If a geocacher has a magnetic decal attached to a transformer owned by the utility company maybe they will read this thread and reconsider that hide. I am not mandating change, I am simply giving others the benefit of power awareness training that I have been given. In that respect every post serves the same purpose, geocachers are informed and forum participants can get their yah yahs out.
most informative post of the bunch. definitely raised my awareness for placing caches near electrical equipment. I still think placing an LPC, however mundane and unrewarding the find, should not be banned purely from the 1/1,00000000000000000 or whatever chance of electrocution argument. I'm also against the argument that placing these types of caches trains people to be unsafe around electrical equipment, or that these types of caches should be disallowed because of the 35% of people with no common sense. If you're dumb enough to pry open an electrical box or stick your hand in there, then you get this year's Darwin award. Same goes for sticking your hand in a tree, hole, or stump, regardless of cache 'attributes'. You decided there was a low enough risk to warrant the sticking of your hand, and you accepted the possible consequences of said hand-sticking.
That being said, I don't believe in placement of LPC's because of the lack of reward in finding them. That doesn't mean my group doesn't still hunt them, we just make it a joke as to who has to get out of the car. I'll personally never hide them, but don't believe others should be barred from hiding them, as some LPC finders might find them rewarding.
I will say this thread has increased my level of awareness when placing stages of a multi or hiding a cache near dangerous electrical currents.
