hi my name is john francis thank you for joining me during this introduction of arc flash auto
Evaluation a solution used to automatically evaluate arc flash instant energy against
equipment boundary limits and damage points, when performing protection and coordination studies. It
is difficult to anticipate potential arc flash and coordination issues due to the differences
between the arc and bolted fault currents arc flash auto evaluation automatically evaluates
arc flash incident energy and equipment arc flash damage points to quickly resolve these conflicts
limiting the number of scenarios required or even removing the need for an isolated arc flash study
during this presentation i will discuss some of the challenges of an arc flash study we will look
at instant energy evaluation within tcc's the technology of arc flash auto evaluation and the
benefits received from using this innovative technology budget constraints are a challenge
we all have to face however when it comes to safety ideally this should not be the case
arc flash auto evaluation is a solution developed to address the budget concerns within the industry
we will overcome challenges such as no budget for equipment below 480 volts
or in certain countries arc flash is completely out of scope but the engineering and management
team know that safety is a priority and should still be assessed for projects that do require
art flash many of us are faced with an increase in time spent on the additional parameters required
by ieee 1584 2018 edition some of these parameters are difficult to collect from the field and many
people use typical data which historically may not have produced worst case results let's use
arc flash auto evaluation to overcome these challenges etap see area plots or otherwise known
as constant energy boundary areas can mitigate the arc flash results at the coordination stage
this graphical representation provides a reference boundary based on user-defined
instant energy limits it allows a protection engineer to consider multiple operating conditions
and variations in the way an arc flash could occur within electrical equipment this concept of c area
was awarded second best paper at ieee pcic for its impact on safety and technology innovation
the equipment can use a globally defined c area boundary limit and this data is used on all or
specific equipment within a specified range the range can be based on voltage and or current in
this case let's automatically assess any equipment between 208 to 480 and with a fault current range
between 0.2 to 10 ka in etep in ieee 1584 the fault current exclusion limit was decreased from
around 10k to 0.2 which historically may have drastically increased the amount of time spent
on equipment within this range with the option selected etap will automatically assess equipment
within these limits removing the need to do an individual study per device and repeat studies
for the same equipment within the same fault current range saving countless amounts of hours
so if i select a panel board here all paddle boards can be globally assigned from 208 to 1kv
we can set the voltage tolerance range the short circuit current range that we're going to assess
i can add electrical electrode configuration so the software will automatically compare
pcb give you worst case conditions implement the gap variation boundaries and the dimension
working distance for all panel boards in this range instantly amount allowing me to assess
all equivalent panel boards i only have to model one and quickly evaluate all in one in one click
which we'll soon see before we evaluate or make any changes
i'm going to create another layer for revision so that i can change my protective device settings
in this recommended layer such that i don't overwrite my base project at this time
go to recommended now i can hit ctrl a and select the entire project
or i can just select a group of buses to evaluate
this opens up our automatic star auto evaluation view it gives me a tabular response of protection
and coordination information since we're focusing our flash auto let's take a look at the art flash
results in this case i can expand to see the time current coordination studies and this will allow
me to do our flash within the protection and coordination mode i don't have to switch back
and forth i don't even have to do a separate our flash studies done completely integrated we see
that the coordination all passes in this case but we do have some art flash situations that we have
let's start with bus c on the load side breaker so we can see that there's enough space for the
incident energy c area curve and we we have a passing criteria and same with the remaining
breakers of within bus c on the load side but on the bus side on the main bus protected by side
it crosses the the protective device so we know that you cannot click you cannot get
below four calories per centimeter square and same thing with the line side breaker
and here we're considering not only the relay time but the breaker trip time as well that's
all considered which is why there's no particular why there is a gap shown but
it's still failing because it's incorporating the breaker time
and when we try to adjust the relay settings this model doesn't provide any lower settings so this
is the the lowest range we can go and we know that our coordination as we saw is is correct so
we can't we can't adjust we can't adjust the relay time however we can balance and compromise on the
accepted incident energy range of bus c so on the on the bus side we can change it to eight calories
per centimeter square and with that change our flash auto evaluation is automatically going
to adjust its evaluation and now you see a passing criteria and we can do the same thing for the line
side and once you click on the auto evaluation viewer you see the tcc is automatically updating
to the to the appropriate tcc and we change that line side location from 8 to 12 calories per
centimeter squared giving us a passing criteria for that location as well and finally we see that
we have an arc duration critical limit so the arc point damage point the arc energy damage point is
failing it's exceeding the critical limit so we can start off by adjusting the relay time
dial settings bringing it down and adjusting the settings and evaluating if this change allows us
to stay clear of the critical limit of the energy damage which it does now we see it's
that we have a passing criteria and we have a price and go tear in all the locations and with
that relay setting change we can take a look at the coordination and that is still passing as well
so it quickly allows us to evaluate our flashing coordination at the same time
arc flash auto evaluation drastically reduces the amount spent on an arc flash study now we
can consider arc flash during the short circuit protection and coordination stage you no longer
have to do your protection coordination studies move to a separate arclash study and go back to
your coordination to double check if your if your arc flash changes are valid the c area
significantly reduces the number of scenarios that you have to manually consider
incorporating all the characteristics for physical dimensions voltage profiles short
circuit ranges etap produces the worst case condition and evaluates against that scenario
the seat area also reduces the labor intensive data collection process to collect all of this
information needed for ieee 1584 for each piece of equipment thank you for watching this webinar
arc flash auto evaluation and learning how to save time on future arclash projects
you