I'm working on a remodeled office building that will have 20 modular furniture units (cubicles). The engineered drawings put 1 or 2 units per circuit with a demand of 6.8 kVA total (all 20 units).
The owner is concerned, as pretty much every cubicle currently has a 1500W space heater that the employees like to use in the winter months. Im going to a meeting tomorrow to discuss options. I think putting each cubicle on its own dedicated circuit would solve the end-user portion of the problem - if the employee trips a breaker, they would only affect themselves, and if the problem is chronic perhaps they would by a smaller heater/not set it on max. However, Im not sure on sizing the panel.
The plans currently have a 45 kVA transformer feeding a 150A 3 phase 120/208V panel with a demand of 31.5 kVA. If I give each piece of furniture a new demand of 1800 (1500+300 for the computer) - that pretty much doubles the total to 60.7 kVa. However, it seems absurd to me to size this on a worst case scenario.
I have already quoted increasing the transformer to 75kVa and the 120/208V panel, but I was wondering if an increase would really be necessary.
Thanks for any advice.
The owner is concerned, as pretty much every cubicle currently has a 1500W space heater that the employees like to use in the winter months. Im going to a meeting tomorrow to discuss options. I think putting each cubicle on its own dedicated circuit would solve the end-user portion of the problem - if the employee trips a breaker, they would only affect themselves, and if the problem is chronic perhaps they would by a smaller heater/not set it on max. However, Im not sure on sizing the panel.
The plans currently have a 45 kVA transformer feeding a 150A 3 phase 120/208V panel with a demand of 31.5 kVA. If I give each piece of furniture a new demand of 1800 (1500+300 for the computer) - that pretty much doubles the total to 60.7 kVa. However, it seems absurd to me to size this on a worst case scenario.
I have already quoted increasing the transformer to 75kVa and the 120/208V panel, but I was wondering if an increase would really be necessary.
Thanks for any advice.