At Hill Electric Company, we have a history of performing industrial electrical maintenance on major electrical components. As an industrial electrical contractor, we’ve been trusted for 70 years because of our quality and innovation throughout our service areas in the Upstate of South Carolina. In this blog we’ll explore why ensuring electrical systems are operating safely, efficiently and reliably reduces the likelihood of accidents and unnecessary expenses.
Why is electrical preventative maintenance essential?
Electrical maintenance is essential for several reasons. The National Electrical Code is part of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). This code is enforced in order to prevent catastrophic events such as fires, explosions, and injury. The active components such as breakers, overloads, and fuses, must be operating properly and with the correct settings in order for them to be able to minimize the damage of a catastrophic electrical event. The passive components such as busway, internals of electrical gear, wires, mechanical connections of electrical components, and insulators, have to be maintained, tested, and monitored so they do not cause a catastrophic event.
What is an electrical catastrophic event?
An electrical catastrophic event is when electrical currents flow through an undesired path. Usually this is due to a bad insulator, damaged wiring, machinery component failures, or dirt, dust, and other contaminants. When an electrical catastrophic event happens, the amount of power that flows through the path of the fault is extremely high for as long as the system can maintain. This is due to the fact that during the fault there is no electrical resistance to slow the amount of power traveling.
The main factors in the resulting damage are the time of the fault and the total available incident energy. Active electrical components are in place to stop this flow and reduce the available energy as much as possible. Catastrophic electrical events cause an enormous amount of heat, which results in fires, explosions, damage to equipment, and risk of injury or death.
What is electrical maintenance?
Electrical maintenance covers all aspects of testing, monitoring, and performing preventive measures. Here are some of the most common preventative measures:
- Infrared Scans – These scans detect poor mechanical connections of electrical components that cause heat, which is an early sign of a future failure. We most commonly see these in power distribution components such as breakers, bus bars, busway, and wired connections.
- Component Cleaning – Some contaminants are conductive and some are insulating. Both of these lead to faults with electrical equipment. It is important to routinely and properly clean the electrical power distribution components. The frequency of when these cleanings need to be conducted depends on the environment. For normal environments the average is every three years.
- Testing and monitoring- Most power distribution components remain in the same state for long periods of time. How can you ensure that protective electrical equipment such as breakers will work when needed? Breakers and other distribution components need to be periodically tested and monitored. This ensures operation and tracks trends so that you know potential issues before they happen.
There are serious safety risks when gaining access to these components if not performed by a trained and qualified electrician. Please make sure that only professionals like Hill Electric perform this work.
How to ensure you are properly maintaining your equipment.
Hill Electric has performed thousands of hours of maintenance on electrical equipment and we are well versed on the National Electrical Code. The tasks themselves are simple and repetitive, but the impact and need for a trained eye to recognize potential issues is immense. Hill’s familiarity allows us to identify issues and recognize when we will need additional expertise. Some of these tasks are an extremely specific discipline and require additional expertise and training. We have relationships with partnering companies that are trusted in the industry and we utilize these partnerships to provide a complete solution to address the needs at hand. A few of our partners include: Instel Power Products, BorderStates, Blanchard Machinery, and Peak Safety Performance.
Call us at Hill Electric. We are glad to answer any questions and help you with your electrical system maintenance needs.
Written by David Wolke, Vice President of Hill Electric
