FWCS PES UTILTY USERS GROUP MEETING - Arc Flash Remediation at a Utility

tom blair tom_blair@ieee.org 813 245 5842	Wednesday, July 18, 2012 at 9am-1pm
	Meeting Description Date: Wednesday, July 18, 2012 Time: 9:00AM – 1:00PM Speaker: Thomas Blair, P.E., Senior Consulting Engineer, TECO George Bolos, P.E., Consulting Engineer, TECO Location: 13031 Wyandotte Road, Apollo Beach, FL 33572 Cost: FREE (a snack will be provided) RSVP: Online at: http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r3/floridawc/ (Select Reservations) Questions: Tom Blair at 813-228-1111, ext 48179 or tom_blair@ieee.org
	Additional Information Your IEEE PES West Coast Chapter is starting a local utility users group where we plan to meet once every few months and discuss current topics of interest to local utilities. We hope to share our lessons learned with other fellow utility engineers and provide an additional benefit of IEEE membership for utility engineers. Currently, the following topics will be scheduled for discussion in future meetings. • Arc Flash Labeling and Remediation • NERC/CIP Compliance Efforts • Substation / Generation Station Upgrade Efforts • Substation / Distribution System Automation • Generation Station Relay Upgrades • Distribution Monitoring Equipment Upgrades. If there are other topics of interest, please email us and let us know what topics would be beneficial for the group. Our first meeting will be Wednesday, July 18 at the Tampa Electric Big Bend Power Station where TECO will present their work on Arc Flash Remediation. Tampa Electric Engineers will present a case study of an arc flash remediation project at a utility electrical generation facility. We review the engineering technologies and safe work practices utilized to reduce the arc flash incident energy values at an existing electric utility generation facility. An initial engineering study was performed of a 40 year old facility to determine the arc flash incident energy values at various pieces of equipment at the station. After the initial engineering study was completed, a second phase of the project was undertaken to reduce these values. Several technical challenges unique to the electric utility industry had to be overcome to substantially reduce incident energy levels. Examples of such challenges were how to address incident energy values on electrical equipment directly connected to large generators such as station service breakers and how to address the substantially large values of arcing current due to the size of onsite generation (about 1500 MW of generation capacity) all of which lead to large values of incident energy levels at some locations at generation facilities. This meeting will present the engineering design solutions and the safe work practices that were implemented to address these and other challenges at the electric utility generation facility to reduce incident energy levels and improve electrical safety at the station. The result of the arc flash remediation project was that final arc flash values were substantially reduced. At one location, after the initial engineering study performed in phase 1 of the project, the electrical distribution system for one unit was found to have 69% of the electrical equipment with incident energy levels greater than 8 cal/cm2. After the completion of phase 2 of the arc flash remediation project, all of this equipment had the incident energy levels reduced to values below 8 cal/cm2.
	Meeting Location 13031 Wyandotte Road, Apollo Beach Driving Directions From I75, Exit at 246 to Big Bend Road and head west. After crossing, US Hwy 41, make right turn onto Wyandotte road. Check in at Gate 50 with security. We will meet in the administration building, second floor, large assembly room. IMPORTANT – Please sign up on the website listed above so the station will have advanced notice of members attending tour. When arriving at site, please check in with security at Gate 50 on Wyandotte Road. Please have Government issued photo identification such as a driver’s license with you for entry to facility. Also, attendees must wear long pants (no shorts, dresses or skirts) and must wear closed toed shoes (no open sandals, flip-flops, or high heeled shoes). You will be provided PPE such as hard hat, safety glasses and ear plugs at Gate 50 when you enter the facility.
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