Old GE powermaster low voltage switchgear Arc flash

[adityalagudu3291]

One of Old GE Powermaster low voltage switchgear experienced a major arc flash incident a few days back. We are looking for a potential root cause for this incident.

Please see the single line for reference, there is no overcurrent relay protection on the gear. We are looking into several options of cause of the incident, like dust in cubical, moisture in cubical, insulation failure, etc, but couldn't able to come to conclusion to one incident.

Based on previous experience, it would be helpful if anybody provides more insight into this incident. And we are also looking for further options to back this gear online, like refurbishing the breakers or upgrading the gear and replacing the gear with a new one, etc.

 

[wbdvt]

What was going on at the time? Was a breaker being racked in? Was it being closed? Was it being opened? Was there a fault on the circuit it feeds and it was tripping? What is the maintenance history of the breaker? What kind of trip units are on the breaker? Was it isolated to one breaker or the whole switchgear?

 

[garbo]

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One of Old GE Powermaster low voltage switchgear experienced a major arc flash incident a few days back. We are looking for a potential root cause for this incident.

Please see the single line for reference, there is no overcurrent relay protection on the gear. We are looking into several options of cause of the incident, like dust in cubical, moisture in cubical, insulation failure, etc, but couldn't able to come to conclusion to one incident.

Based on previous experience, it would be helpful if anybody provides more insight into this incident. And we are also looking for further options to back this gear online, like refurbishing the breakers or upgrading the gear and replacing the gear with a new one, etc.

Another piece of ge junk. Place I retired from made the big mistake of getting ge piece of junk dual service 13.2 KV switchgear. Had an Arc flash rating of 125. My inspector could not believe such a high #. Largest rated PPE that I could find only rated for 60. Aholes installed vents at eye level instead of 8' off floor. In the event of an arc flash you head would certainly be turned to ashes. Worked on 5 or 6 locations that had ge switchgear and all had major problems. We had MCC buckets in several buildings from 4 different companies. Of course ge junk always ran 20 to 30 degrees F hotter then competitors. Starter coils with only 112 to 120 volts ran at 160 to 170 degrees F. Back in 1970's crack ge lazy service department contaimaneted one of our oil filled 13.2 KV transformers with PCB'S due to using a PCB filled extra long hose from last oil filtering job.