Data center hot work

[Davebones]

We have a data center that has servers for North American plants . They want to add some 220V and 120V outlets . I say we have to schedule a power outage to work inside the panels as I don't see this as being "INFEASIBLE " or a "GREATER HAZARD " according to 70E . Just wondered how everyone else would deal with this situation !!!!

 

[zog]

We have a data center that has servers for North American plants . They want to add some 220V and 120V outlets . I say we have to schedule a power outage to work inside the panels as I don't see this as being "INFEASIBLE " or a "GREATER HAZARD " according to 70E . Just wondered how everyone else would deal with this situation !!!!

I agree with you, ask them to sign off on your EEWP and they will change thier minds.

 

[cowboyjwc]

My guess is that you're going to have a hard time getting permission for a shut down, but I would let them know that if something goes wrong there could be a shut down anyway. At least if they do it when you ask then they can control it.

 

[dbuckley]

... but I would let them know that if something goes wrong there could be a shut down anyway. At least if they do it when you ask then they can control it.

That is an absolutely critical point. If you arc-flash the panel (quite apart from the potential injury and damage of this event) the servers are going to stop dead, and power will be off until some AHJ allows them power be switched on again, assuming there's enough left of the electrical system to support a restart. Servers that lose power at best take longer to come back up than servers that were shut down properly.

In a properly designed data centre there is never any requirement to work hot; its only 'cos they've been cheap on the installation they now find themselves having to schedule an outage. See Wikipedia article as a reference, in particular the terms "Tier 3" and "Concurrently maintainable".

Make sure they are aware that this is their choice of cost model, there is nothing inevitable about this...