×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Surge protection

Surge protection

Surge protection

(OP)
I have been asked by my company to investigate and make recommendations with regards to voltage surges on our plant.
I do not have alot of experience with this kind of thing and was hoping if someone might have some knowledge, experience with this, or know of a good web site to get the relavent information. What I need to know is the following:
1. causes of voltage surges
2. things to look at to identify if it is a problem
3. where to put the surge protection if needed
4. Best kind, worst kind of protection
5. Earthing of the system to illiminate ground loops.

The in-coming voltage is stepped down to 525V which goes
to the main board where the neutral is earthed to the earth bar which is connected to a ground stake. The plant has many plc's, soft starters, vsd's and DOL's.

RE: Surge protection

I would start the whole thing by getting some basic information. It is a cyclic experience where measurements play an important role. You can do very well with an ordinary digital oscilloscope for your preliminary studies. But you should think about buying or hiring a dedicated analyser (like Dranetz or similar).

You will also need to have access to - and understand - the standards that apply. It usually takes some time to understand what they are about and how to interpret them. Allow plenty of time for this. Find out if your mains voltage seems to be within limits or not. Make notes about which hours and minutes there seems to be problems.

Arm yourself with a single line diagram showing what your 525 V distribution looks like. Transformer and capacitor data. Where heavy loads and sensitive loads are and so on.

Interview people that have (mains voltage) problems with their equipment. Ask them how often, when, how they make things work again (reset, repair, other). Compare their answers with your notes about mains surges and transients.

I could go on for quite a while with this. But it is lunch time so I leave it like this for a while.

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources