How to secure the pump cables in an open cast mine from theives

[quadir786]

I work in an open cast mine in India and am fed up of these thieves who every other day steal wires from my coal mine. Csn you plz suggest me any way that I can protect it. I thought of using infrared sensors bur these sensors work in straight line and the wires in my mine are spread in a circular fashion. SO the most suitable method would be to secure the area.

Please help me with any sensible sugestions you have. Every thought matters for me.

Thanks in advance

 

[MikeHalloran]

Shoot 'em. Shoot 'em again.
Shoot 'em until they're dead, then shoot 'em some more.

OR

Put a bounty on 'em, and let someone else shoot 'em.

OR

Mark your cables, and notify the local scrap dealers that you'll shoot _them_.

OR

Convert to a _much_ higher voltage.
Smaller cables, more attrition among the thieves.





Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[oldfieldguy]

When you get an answer, a lot of people need to know. We lost thirty feet off the exposed ends of several runs of 34.5 kV cable. The cable was installed but not yet energized. The thieves might have gotten $600 worth of copper. The project had to spend $600,000 for the replacement.

apparently hiring security guards at a buck above minimum wage isn't the answer.

Mike H. has a good idea, but it's frowned upon here as killing off the voters.

old field guy

 

[itsmoked]

Pay a reliable security guard.

Put in motion triggered lighting to help the guard detect incursions.

Put in entry doors and lock them.

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[ScottyUK]

It would be tragic if the protection upstream was accidentally disabled, wouldn't it?


----------------------------------

If we learn from our mistakes I'm getting a great education!

 

[TurbineGen]

Are these exposed copper wires? If so I paint mine silver. It looks just like Aluminum and even corrodes to look like aluminum. Most theives are looking for copper so they over look it.

If they are not bare, then use aluminum wire. Once the theives realize they're not cutting out copper, they probably will go elsewhere.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
If it is broken, fix it. If it isn't broken, I'll soon fix that.

 

[marks1080]

Release the dogs.


We have started to use razor wire and double fenceing. Theft has dropped lately, but then again, so has the price of copper.

 

[racobb]

We are in the process of installing razor wire at the fence top and inside near the bottom of the fence on a 115 - 25 kV substation that was just put into service about a month ago. Twice within approx. a 1 week time frame, someone climbed the fence and went over the barbed wire at the top to cut the 4/0 copper grounds off of the hot 14.4 kV voltage regulators.

Expect to find one of them dead on the ground in the near future for probably 20 bucks worth of copper.

Alan

 

[ScottyUK]

Most of the bigger grid substations in the UK have electric fences. There's a certain irony that a 275kV open terminal substation needs an electric fence.


----------------------------------

If we learn from our mistakes I'm getting a great education!

 

[rmw]

Fact stranger than fiction.

rmw

 

[esee135]

Easy, specify bare copper, and support it on insulators. Also keep the differential trip, err forget differential, just do over current protection, no need to false-trip on a thief-to-ground fault, that would be a waste of an 86 trip.