Busduct Monitoring - how?

[Maglatch]

I work at manufacturing facility that has a busduct distribution system overhead. Each bus duct is rated for 1600 Amps (main bus) and has about 6-8 "side busses" branching off the main bus rated at 600A each. Each side bus is protected by 600a fuses. Headers are plugged anywhere along the side busses to feed the machines and equipment below.

Our problem is we have no idea on the actual loading of these side busses other than a breaker in the substation that reads the total busduct load. I have looked at putting in CT and a metering system but the bus bars are to close together to install CT's. Any ideas?? Do I have to go to a specaility shop and make some custom bus sections that can fit the CT's?

 

[dpc]

Either that or maybe install a couple of bus-to-cable transitions, then put run cable through a box and put donut CTs through the cables in the box.

 

[ScottyUK]

A Rogowski coil can be made fairly small in diameter and still be heavily insulated to fit over a live busbar. I've had some great results working with Ro-Coil on a couple of semi-custom designs. A tiny company but a pleasure to deal with, and run by an engineer instead of an accountant. Custom stuff is so cheap that you will feel guilty getting it.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rocoil/

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Sometimes I only open my mouth to swap feet...

 

[Skogsgurra]

Agree. There are (or used to be) rogowski coils wound on belts instead of flexible tubing. Normal busbar ducts usually do not have much air between the busbars. It is possible that Scotty's engineer can make a vey thin one, wound on a belt.

Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org

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[dieselvette]

When I did P.M. for a large machine shop, we checked periodically for overloading with an hand-held infrared heat sensor. Obviously, if the bus bar got over a certain temp, there must be a problem. If you don't need anything too precise and you don't need the constant data availability, then this meets most P.M. standards.

nic

Nic Van Engen
Electrical Technician

 

[rbulsara]

Is there any space to install CTs in the 600A fuse boxes for the side stubs?

 

[Maglatch]

rbulsara...that was our first thought. We checked the fuse box area and because of the bus configuration inside there is no room for a CT.

Scottyuk, I checked the website for rogowski, I think this maybe be something we can use. I am looking into seing if the CT inputs can be used on our existing monitoring system.

 

[ScottyUK]

Maglatch,

If this is for a metering system rather than a protection system, I think Ro-Coil have built current sourcing amplifiers to drive inputs intended for CTs in other applications. The man to speak to is called David Ward. He is an absolute mine of information and very forthcoming with assistance.


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Sometimes I only open my mouth to swap feet...