Merry Chirstmas everyone, and a joyous New Year.
Hope for 2012 to bring even great happiness and success than 2011. Stay safe and alert this 2012 when working with electricity.
NESC 2012 Review Seminar
December 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment
The Spokane IEEE Section will be hosting David J Marne on January 30th and 31st for a NESC 2012 Review Seminar. From the website the seminar will be at most $580 for IEEE Members and $630 for Non-Members. This is an amazing value for a 2 day seminar.
If you will be, or can be in the Spokane area and you work in the power system arena a seminar like this is the perfect way to start the New Year.
Major Changes and General Overview of the 2012 National Electrical Safety Code
The Major Changes and General Overview of the 2012 NESC® seminar is a two day class focusing on the major changes in the 2012 Edition of the National Electrical Safety Code® (NESC®). The class will cover in detail the major changes to the NESC® 2012 Edition and also provide a general overview of each part of the NESC® (Day 1). Applying the Code to day-to-day work will be stressed by focusing on practical NESC® examples and applications (Day 2). The class is intended for engineers, staking technicians, power linemen, communications linemen, safety personnel and inspectors. Prior working knowledge of the NESC® is not required.
The class includes ample time for questions and attendees are encouraged to share their NESC® applications with the entire class. The presentations are rich in graphics and practical applications. Learning the changes in the NESC® is a must for personnel responsible for operating a safe utility system.
Why I’m a Card Carrying IEEE Member
December 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Over the years there has been a number of different reasons why I was an IEEE member, and why I served on the executive.
How I got started
It started when I was at Dalhousie University and was looking for a group to get involved with to help my resume and meet people in the industry. The IEEE Student Branch seemed like a great place to start, so I started volunteering as the Secretary and the local Section, Canadian Atlantic Section invites all students to attend their meetings which is where I started to meet the people that worked in the area.
IEEE members are great people to hang out with.
One of the activities that the student branch ran was a trip around the province to visit various companies from small manufacturing, pulp and paper mills and and power generation stations. This trip was a great time and opened my eyes wider on some of the benefits of an IEEE member.
From that point on I was a serial volunteer taking positions of Student Branch Chair (sorry Leo), section secretary, to vice-chair and regional newsletter editor and finally holding the Chair in Spokane.
That is my history as an IEEE member since 2002.
I'm a member because...
Mo El-Hawary
Some of the reasons to why I have continued with my membership has changed over the years, and others have acted in cycles. For example, when I first joined as a student, the major reason was to get to know some of the people in the industry that I was interested in entering, and possibly help get a position in the area, and when I moved to Spokane, while I already had a job lined up, I didn't know anyone from the area and IEEE was a great starting point.
IEEE has also afforded me the ability to travel all over North America, and meet amazing people and make life long friends, whether it was a student conference in London, ON or the sections congress in Quebec City, QC and San Francisco, CA.
IEEE membership has also allowed me to learn from the giants in the industry, whether it is discussing power system analysis from the people that write the seminal text books, or learning the challenges of building the life-safety system in the Mercury program from one of the lead engineers.
(Photo Credits:
Featured Photo - UCLA IEEE Student Branch
Second Photo - Section Congress 2008 Photo page
Third Photo - Sections Congress Facebook Page)
2011 Eaton Consulting Application Guide
November 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment
The new 2011 Eaton Consulting Application Guide is now available to download. This is an update to one of the power system resources that was recommended in a previous post.
You can choose the sections that are most relevant to you at Sparkyresource.com/ConsultingApplicationGuide or you can get the entire book, all 74MB of it by clicking here.
Arc Flash Video – Interior substation racking
September 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment
There are a lot of great videos available showing the affects of an Arc Flash and of an Arc Blast. If you have ever sat through a training course you have seen them.
We will be posting videos that show the awesome affects when things don't go right. Remember, whenever possible work only at a zero energy state.
Power System Design Resouces: The Free Edition
September 19, 2011 By 2 Comments
Modern power system design is the application of sound engineering practices to electrical systems primary develoted to the generation, distribution, and consumption of electrical power. Ideally, this process is governed by minimum code requirements, standards from agencies such as IEEE and ANSI, and commonly accepted industry standards. Occasionally, the process is marred by little appreciation for tribal knowledge, incomplete understanding of standards, or the rote execution of a design with little appreciation for the application. As engineer, we strive to avoid these pitfalls by furthering our understanding though the acquisition of additional source materials. Unfortunately, despite the ubiquity of the internet, groups such as IEEE and ANSI don't provide their standards for free, and the availability of regionally enforced code is an area of ambiguity. Fortunately, some manufacturers have provided resources that are invaluable to engineers:
General Electric provides The Art and Science of Protective Relaying free for download. A quick perusal of the Bibliography for each chapter reveals the history of this document, and despite the dates, this document remains as relevant as ever. The principals are still applied in modern protective relays, and numerous Defense Plant Corporation era facilities still employ electromechanical protection to great success.
As a modern supplement to GE's definitive guide, Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories provides numerous resources under their Literature section. In addition to the Journal of Reliable Power, they provide white papers and technical papers outlining the methodologies used in a modern digital relay and their appropriate application. Be warned, they do require a free account for access to their library.
Eaton publishes a Consulting Application Guide, a rather fancy name for the Eaton/Cutler-Hammer catalog of all relevant industrial equipment. Despite the commercial nature, the first chapter provides substantial reference material on all manner of subjects. From protection, to system layout and generation, the Eaton catalog touches on many relevant subjects.
Image provided by the Seattle Municipal Archives
GFCI vs GFEP vs AFCI
August 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter (GFCI) is a safety device which is intended to interupt the circuit that it is protecting quickly and under very small currents to ground. The intent is to ensure that there is no chance of shock or electrocution from a fault to ground. UL and CSA specify that the circuit must interrupt between 4 and 6 mA
Ground Fault Equipment Protector (GFEP) is a equipment protective device. They work on the same principle as a GFCI but are typically set at 30mA. They are used with outdoor installations such as ice melting, heat trace, etc
Arc Fault Circuit Interrupter (AFCI) is the new kid on the block. A AFCI is newly required by the NEC and CEC in all bedroom circuits, they are designed to trip on a arc signature. These types of faults have been found at the cause of many residential fires. By including this type of protection on circuits in the home the electrical source will be cleared before a fire has a chance to start. There is talk that they will be required on all residental circuits by the 2012 code. NEMA has a great website for AFCI's called AFCIsafety.org
Both the NEC and CEC have requirements where each type of ground fault interrupter must be used, however this does not include ground fault protection on grounded wye systems.
If you would like to know more about this topic, or have a question please leave a comment or take advantage of the contact page.
What I’m Reading: Week 1 (Reboot)
February 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment
- Support AFCI Safety - The 2011 NEC requires the installation of Arc Fault Circuit Interruptors in new residential construction. Check out the campaign to raise awareness on Facebook.
- Power supply for temporary installations within the entertainment industry has always interested me. Then I started reading the EESCO website and they post a lot of great links and articles on safety and code. Including the disconnect requirements at tap points.
- Another EESCO article that I came across was the CSA Z462 Fact Sheet published last year. It is still relevant today, if you are unsure about what CSA Z462 is, this article is a good place to start.
- Match the motor to the load - Plant Services has a great article about why matching motors to specific loads will increase overall plant reliability.
Incident Energy Report – What you need to know
December 9, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Wow, that was bad.
Near the end of October I was shown a very poorly written Incident Energy Report. The reason that it was given to us, a competing consulting firm, was that we designed the system and on of the action items listed was regarding the size of the transformer protection. They said it was wrong, we checked and they were wrong.
For the record, the secondary circuit breaker of a transformer may be used for the transformer protection as long as it is no greater than 250% of the full load current of the transformer AND the up stream protection from the transformer is no greater than 600% that of the full load of the transformer.
We checked and we meet both of these requirements. Besides that, the breaker settings that we used, and they used in there report, were well within the transformer damage curves.
What’s this all about?
But that is NOT the reason I am writing this first entry, basically there are some things that every Incident Energy Report must include. Since this is more than can be covered in a single post I am going to write a 6 Part series explaining what I believe must be included in every IE Report.
The parts are:
- Part 1: Site Background Information and Scope
- Part 2: Description of the System
- Part 3: Short Circuit Information
- Part 4: Protection Coordination Information
- Part 5: Incident Energy Levels and associated Boundaries
- Part 6: Recommendations
Each one of these sections must be included in every report that you may write or receive from a consultant. If one is missing when a review report is issued ask why it is missing.
This is not to say that each section will have to be called out within the report, depending on the scope and size of the system they may be simply broken out into line items, but they must be included. However in this one report that I had viewed, this was not the case, and this is why I have decided to write this series of posts. I will be adding the posts through the months of January and February and will have a detailed summary post at the end.
High Fault Contribution may not be a bad thing
October 26, 2009 By 2 Comments
In the past you determined the bus withstand of equipment by the bolted fault. In some cases the system would be designed to limit the available fault energy on any one bus by installing higher impedance transformers, multiple small transformers, etc.
Today there is as much concern regarding the Incident Energy (IE) released in an arc fault as there is regarding if the equipment can withstand a bolted fault. In regards to IE more fault current may actually lower the energy when the protection is in its instantaneous range. The amount of time required to clear a fault decreases as the magnitude of fault current increases. The IE equation, energy is related to the square of time. If the time to clear the fault is halfed, the IE is 25% of the original.
Higher fault energy typically represents a stiffer overall electrical system. This leads to better coordination as the designer will be better able to predict what will happen during an incident.