That fire is not caused by a broken PEN, there are image look up tools that will identify it for you. Fine art America has it listed as an image of a practice drill in Calafornia, from 2013, and shutterstock and adobe both list it as part of their collections of 'fires and firemen' but with later date stamps.
II is just a 'clip-art' image.

But yes, diverted neutral current is pretty much inevitable if you have more than one property on a PME supply sharing a metallic service like gas or water assuming main bonds to BS7671 are in place. The bigger question is at what level it becomes a hazard worth worrying about.

Clearly a broken PEN leads to 100% current  diversion and is a far more serious matter. I can well believe as the 1970s Aluminium clad cables (CONSAC) suffer from moisture ingress and general age, this will be more common. I also think that the regime of reporting such things has became more formalized. - a great many instances were probably silently fixed in the past, when there was not an associated serious incident.

While we are renewing street mains to handle electric vehicles, heat pumps etc, all this will need to be kept in mind.

Mike.

That fire is not caused by a broken PEN, there are image look up tools that will identify it for you. Fine art America has it listed as an image of a practice drill in Calafornia, from 2013, and shutterstock and adobe both list it as part of their collections of 'fires and firemen' but with later date stamps.
II is just a 'clip-art' image.

But yes, diverted neutral current is pretty much inevitable if you have more than one property on a PME supply sharing a metallic service like gas or water assuming main bonds to BS7671 are in place. The bigger question is at what level it becomes a hazard worth worrying about.

Clearly a broken PEN leads to 100% current  diversion and is a far more serious matter. I can well believe as the 1970s Aluminium clad cables (CONSAC) suffer from moisture ingress and general age, this will be more common. I also think that the regime of reporting such things has became more formalized. - a great many instances were probably silently fixed in the past, when there was not an associated serious incident.

While we are renewing street mains to handle electric vehicles, heat pumps etc, all this will need to be kept in mind.

Mike.

Not all DNOs used Consac and quite a lot of Consac has already been overlaid.  It might help if the DNOs produced some form of risk tool.  Perhaps a post code look up with risk ratings derived from an analysis of broken PENs/DNC by cable/network type.  Another way forward would be to make measurement and reporting excess values of current through gas meters part of the meter inspection regime.  This would be easy and cheap enough to do.  No doubt some enterprising soul will make an alarm that can be fitted around pipes and cables, I can even see this finding its way into the regs!

mapj1 said:

That fire is not caused by a broken PEN, there are image look up tools that will identify it for you. Fine art America has it listed as an image of a practice drill in Calafornia, from 2013, and shutterstock and adobe both list it as part of their collections of 'fires and firemen' but with later date stamps.
II is just a 'clip-art' image.

Indeed, hence my tongue-in-cheek observation. One might expect such sensationalist photos in the tabloids for common consumption, but I would expect better from a more serious source such as EandT!