One building, two tenant spaces with dedicated electric services for each space. Electric feeder from one space to the other permitted?

Sparky2791

Sparky2791

Senior Member
Location
Northeast, PA
Occupation
Electrical Design
Hello!
I am working on a project for a client which is a large commercial building with 2 separate tenant spaces. There is a 3-hour firewall between the 2 spaces. Each space has its own electric service, separate POCO pad mounted transformers feeding each space, and an electric room with service equipment. One service is 2500A the other is 1000A, both are 277/480V 3-phase.

The tenant in each space is the same company and the service in space #1 has lots of spare load based on electric bills peak demand history, they want to take 1000A feeder from Tenant Space #1 and feed equipment in Tenant space #2. Ignoring the fact that there will be an electric feed metered from space #1 in space #2 because the buildings landlord is OK with it, this seems like it is in violation of NEC, but I cannot nail down what section to cite or if anything would allow this as an exception, like a sign at each service or something. I was going to research this tonight but thought I would start here first to get some code back up before a meeting we have regarding this.

Thanks for the replies!
 
If it's a violation it's because it's a violation to serve one building with two services. 230.2. But that section has some exceptions including for capacity considerations which might be able to be invoked here.

The firewall may have allowed the two spaces to be considered separate buildings, thus the two services could be legal as it stands. Bringing a feeder from one to space to the other could invoke the requirements in 225 for when feeders serve separate buildings. There is some ambiguity in my opinion regarding when the NEC allows a building to be fed directly by one service and one feeder from another building.

The NEC does not care if the tenant or owner is or is not the same for both spaces.
 
jaggedben said:
The firewall may have allowed the two spaces to be considered separate buildings, thus the two services could be legal as it stands. Bringing a feeder from one to space to the other could invoke the requirements in 225 for when feeders serve separate buildings. There is some ambiguity in my opinion regarding when the NEC allows a building to be fed directly by one service and one feeder from another building.
Click to expand...
I'll have to dig into it a bit further tonight. Hoping may have some other opinions but I posted this question this AM and yours is the only response.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top