Scaling an arc flash study

You can get started with an arc flash study now while working within the constraints of your available resources. Not only will you begin to improve arc flash safety for your business, but you will gain the valuable experience you need to plan for arc flash studies across your entire facility or campus. 

Which equipment is critical to your operations?

Assess your operations to identify critical equipment that may be difficult to shut down, that is necessary to run critical processes or that provides power to other equipment that may mitigate another hazard. Prioritizing these critical locations for arc flash analysis may help you avoid costly and unplanned shutdowns in the future.

Which equipment must stay energized for maintenance and troubleshooting?

Working on energized equipment should be avoided, but there are some instances when it is simply unavoidable. Energized work can cause arc flash incidents to occur and it should be a priority to inform personnel of the associated hazards. There may be overlap between the critical equipment listed above and the equipment listed here, but it’s important to further characterize equipment that must remain energized.

Which building is most critical if an outage occurs?

It’s important to identify which buildings house equipment key to the core function of your business, and then prioritize them in the first phase of an arc flash analysis. For example, a university would likely consider a utility plant to be a more critical load than dormitory lighting.

What is the age of your equipment?

Older equipment tends to have a greater potential for hazards due to unresponsive protection which could slip out of tolerance as the years pass. Depending on how often equipment has been maintained, relays and breakers may not respond to a fault as quickly as expected. Understanding when the age of the equipment represents a greater potential for an arc flash incident helps prioritize which part of your system should take precedence in an arc flash study.

What resources do you have for supporting an arc flash study?

Knowing what resources you have available will assist in the development of a schedule for your buildings. Begin to quantify resources in terms of what may be required for an arc flash study including budget, internal trained resources to support on-site data collection and required PPE to support the data collection effort.