It is being seen in almost every non developed country that while raining electricity starts blinking on and off or being off while its raining, but the question is why Electricity Should Be Off While Raining always? I’m here to answer this question with some facts that you should know before starting to say bad words about WAPDA (Kidding :P).
Why Electricity Should Be Off While Raining?
There may be many many reasons of this but here i’m going to define few of them that are enough for anyone to know understand the basic information regarding the electricity while its raining.
Lightning is made up of Electrons
This is the main factor that every one should keep in his/her mind that lightning bolt caries millions of electrons and electrons are made up of negative charge, since in transmission or distribution lines (11KV or 220V) there is positive and negative charges (phase and ground) that are connected to our home. Every knows that opposite charges attract each other, Now imagine what if lightning being channeled via distribution lines (with phase), That is enough to OVER FRY all your domestic electrical devices within an instant, including any human-being that interacts it.
In other words Electricity should be off while raining as long as overhead distribution line systems remain. Its not that very intentionally remove power as soon as it rains.
Wet Insulator Acts As Conductor
This is also one of the factor that water is a good conductor of electricity and even wet insulators acts as conductor. In many areas the trees are connected to overhead lines, since trees are made of wood and are insulators but not while they are wet. In those areas where even one branch of tree is connected to the overhead line may cause the shortage of electricity, since the tree is grounded the total electricity will be short circuited if it is wet and may cause to flow very high current from that tree, and if any human-being is touching the tree may got high electric shock and also may causes to dead.
Opposite Charges At A Distance Causes Static Charges Between Them
Since in overhead distribution lines there are 3 phases and 1 neutral line, now it is the fact that between two opposite lines the static charges takes place and the same happens in overhead lines, between the phases and neutral the static charges takes place, now while its raining the drops of water falls on the lines and the path to flow the electricity increases since water is good conductor of electricity but this path is not so longer to interact with other line and becomes short circuited 😀 but in sense the path increases, this is also the fact that rain increases the humidity(‘vapors’ are also made up of water and act as conductor), and that humidity between the overhead lines act as virtual conductor and causes the flow of electricity from phase to neutral or from phase to phase and that is called corona effect and totally loss of electricity.
There may be many other reasons for this but these are the main reasons behind that.
These reasons are applicable in those countries where overhead lines are installed, Its not that very intentionally to remove power as soon as it rains but these are the reasons for the areas where there is no proper maintenance of transmission lines, where tree are touched with overhead lines or the where there is no the proper gap between the overhead lines that should be. In such countries the electricity should be off while raining, while on the other hand these problems are not for the countries where there is underground cables instead of overhead.