closed transition transfer switch

M

mannyb

Senior Member
Location
Florida
Occupation
Electrician
Anyone have experience with closed transition transfer switches? What are some of the things to look for when installing.
 
We have a couple of them at some of our offices, and disabled the functionality. They're great when working properly, but there's no telling when a motor might bind up and you suddenly find yourself back-feeding the generator (yeah, that was a weird call to make to my VP less than three months into opening that office when I was still very green... ahh, yeah, I hit the EPO button, but the thing is still running?). It's something to be aware of whether it's a traditional ATS (ala ASCO or Russelectric) or PLC-operated automatic breakers.
 
ModbusMan said:
We have a couple of them at some of our offices, and disabled the functionality. They're great when working properly, but there's no telling when a motor might bind up and you suddenly find yourself back-feeding the generator (yeah, that was a weird call to make to my VP less than three months into opening that office when I was still very green... ahh, yeah, I hit the EPO button, but the thing is still running?). It's something to be aware of whether it's a traditional ATS (ala ASCO or Russelectric) or PLC-operated automatic breakers.
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They are working on a project where this would do just that during power outages. They can sell power back to the utility at peak rates, this is an actual project with power company where they provide a generator to back up several homes all at once during outage.
 
mannyb said:
They are working on a project where this would do just that during power outages. They can sell power back to the utility at peak rates, this is an actual project with power company where they provide a generator to back up several homes all at once during outage.
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I worked on one at a Kohls distribution center that was similar, but theirs was for extra capacity for the utility. wasn’t a closed transistion, so when they transferred without notice, the conveyors would shut down, and would require restarting. I have seen only one closed transition switch, and they seemed to have problems with it never syncing, so it wouldn’t transfer. I think they had some software issues, but I left that site before they got it working.
 
mannyb said:
They can sell power back to the utility at peak rates, this is an actual project with power company where they provide a generator to back up several homes all at once during outage.
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I can see the first part making sense when there's a solar plant with excess capacity, but unless the cost of fuel is lower than what the utility pays for back-feeding during an outage (perhaps incentivized because the area has a lot of critical health residents?), this doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. More common is a customer agreeing to load-shedding, where they switch over to local generation to take load off during peak consumption times (e.g. Phoenix in a nastier-than-usual summer heat wave).
 
ModbusMan said:
I can see the first part making sense when there's a solar plant with excess capacity, but unless the cost of fuel is lower than what the utility pays for back-feeding during an outage (perhaps incentivized because the area has a lot of critical health residents?), this doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. More common is a customer agreeing to load-shedding, where they switch over to local generation to take load off during peak consumption times (e.g. Phoenix in a nastier-than-usual summer heat wave).
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i dont know specifics but I hear they are placing generators strategically around city for free but own the power during outages for big $$. I dont know how it would work but its happening.
 
ModbusMan said:
I can see the first part making sense when there's a solar plant with excess capacity, but unless the cost of fuel is lower than what the utility pays for back-feeding during an outage (perhaps incentivized because the area has a lot of critical health residents?), this doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. More common is a customer agreeing to load-shedding, where they switch over to local generation to take load off during peak consumption times (e.g. Phoenix in a nastier-than-usual summer heat wave).
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Typically if you are running a generator when there is no outage, then it isn't considered an emergency generator (per the EPA, not the NEC) and requires Tier 4 emissions which typically includes SCR and particulate filter. "Emergency Generator" per the EPA generally can get away with Tier 2 emissions unless there are a lot of them or the AHJ has tighter than national emissions limits.
 
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