Another electric fence picture

Click on picture to embiggen. Point of interest is point of "barb" that is to the left of the fence post and immediately below the yellow insulator.

This section of electric fence was arcing out to the fence post.

I could hear it from seventy yards away.

An arc leaping 7.5mm of air suggests a line voltage of approximately 7000 Volts.

It was one of those instances when the twisted barb on the barbed wire fence lined up with the insulator.  One of the barbs pointed back at the fence post. My digital calipers suggests that the distance between to point of the barb and the fence post was about 7.5mm. That is one more reason to not use barbed wire for an electric fence.

First I tried to break off the barb with my pliers that have insulated handles. I quickly deduced that the insulation on the end of one of the handles had cracked.  After acquiring that information, I turned off the fence and broke the barb that was pointing back toward the post off with the pliers.

This is the fun part of debugging the fence. The tedious work of improving connections and removing weeds means that the fence is plenty hot. Shorts are "self announcing" in the lingo of Quality Control.

Some more work remains improving a few more connections. I am waiting for some more hardware to show up.