Plausible story?

[peter d]

After reading this thread, I was reminded of a story that I read somwhere (I can't remember where.)

Basically, an electrician was working on a 227 Volt high bay light or something like that, and was putting a blank cover on and caused a ground fault. The ground fault tripped the main service GFPE and shut the building down. The building contained some industrial process that "ran away" and burned the building to the ground.

Now, obviously if this story is true major mistakes were made in the along the way. Wouldn't this process be a perfect candidate for a high-impedance grounding system?

 

[steve66]

Re: Plausible story?

If that did happen, I do know it would have been the perfect canidate for some coordination between the breakers and GFP. Hard to believe something downstream didn't trip. Although I have recently learned coordinating GFP with standard breakers and fuses can be very difficult.

Steve

 

[charlie b]

Re: Plausible story?

Originally posted by peter d:Wouldn't this process be a perfect candidate for a high-impedance grounding system?

I think that's the idea. If allowing a breaker to trip on a fault is more likely to risk damage to equipment or harm to humans than just giving an alarm and allowing for an orderly shutdown, then a high-impedance grounding system might be the best solution.