Search? Attn. Brian John

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chris kennedy

chris kennedy

Senior Member
Location
Miami Fla.
Occupation
60 yr old tool twisting electrician
I have to monitor demand at a hospital for a generator hook up. (great timing as we have already bid the job)

I've never done this before. I have seen many threads on the subject but my search words "monitoring" and "metering" are wrong.

Questions,

1) Since we don't do this, should I rent the equipment or hire someone?

2) If I rent is there certian equipment I should favor or stay away from?

3) If I hire someone, is there someone in the Ft. Lauderdale area you would recommend?

4) This hospital has a demand factor hovering around .8. Does the test equipment account for this?

Thanks
 
jim,
i am retired but we did this type of work in the past. actually we have done hospitals in fort lauderdale and boca areas. seems to me they were always interested in emergency power systems ---is this what your dealing with? this required a total of nine meters on one hospital and six on the other. we have two data loggers with associated equipment, so we rented the others to record the data. where the problem is, they wanted two seven day periods recorded. we rented the equipment for a month from "ge rents". we found the rented loggers difficult to set up and the first week of testing was wasted due to one rented meter would not download. it was replaced, but that first week's information was usless! then the second week went all right and then on the third week, we couldn't get another rental meter to download. we air shipped the meter back to "ge rents" and they worked on it and found a way to get the recorded information out and faxed it to us to complete the second week's total. it takes time to program and set up these meters -- "ge rents" made some adjustment to our bill -- but you know how that goes. their meters were not user friendly and i did not like the fact that you could not check what the meter was recording only that it was "on" or recording... we owned metrosonic data logggers and were spoiled by their ease of operating!! and it ain't cheap to rent this stuff...............
 
Intresting Charlie,

I got this call after hours today from the GC. I have done a lot of work for this EE. Will contact him in the AM. The bid set of plans based the 1 meg. genny on POCO billing. (average demand) I fail to understand why I would be looking for a "peak demand" at this time of year.
 
The shop I work for has this Dranetz, I think we used to rent the same one. The guy that uses it likes it a lot.

I have not had a chance to actually use it first hand.

PowerXplorer
 
iwire said:
PowerXplorer
Click to expand...
Thanks Bob,

This doesn't look like something I should be playing with on someone elses T and M dime. Let me find out what the EE is looking for and I'll post tomorrow.

Untill then, if you know of a testing company in my area, please let me know.

Thanks again
 
you may want to give serious consideration to hiring someone with experience in this area rather than trying to wing it. These kind of things often sound a lot easier than they end up being.
 
With some of the monitors there is a learning curve, if you have the time to put the effort into this it may be worth it if there are more on the horizon. If this is a onesy, twosy type thing I would sub it out.

I will look into firms in Fla on Wed. when I get to the office.
 
zog said:
You can search for a NETA testing company in your area at www.netaworld.org
Click to expand...

Thanks everyone. I went to the above link and there are no members in Fla. I also searched "Electrical Testing" and found alot of people who do this but nobody around here.

I'll be looking foward to your post Brian John.
 
i am guessing that it is cheaper and more accurate to monitor the actual loads for a period of time than it is to send someone to the hospital to record "connected loads" for engineering purposes??? maybe they are going to engineer some expansion and need connected existing loads? hope they don't forget loads that do not normally run like smoke exhaust fans??? we began getting calls from engineering firms for this purpose....... you know "building as builts" are never very accurate after a period of time!
 
Charlie,

This is for the addition of a 1 meg. genny (277/480) we bid mabey 3 months ago. Again the load on the bid set of plans is based on POCO bills for the previous year.

When I called the EE today, I asked how long he wanted it monitored and why at this time of year?

His response was:

Just a couple days and the time of year doesn't matter.

Kind of sounds to me like they need this to satisfy something for (state) funding and I will be "going through the motions"

As stated before, I have known and worked for these guys for 4 years or so. They over engineer everything. I think this is a good thing. I am going to take another look at the bid set tomorrow to see what his load calc's are.

To be honest people, I'm a little to busy to be "going through motions".

Thanks again!
 
jim,
their interests are probibly emergency sub feeders concerning the sizing of the generator. our metering at hospitals were always on emergency circuits. many sites ran out of emergency power when smoke evacuation fans were required for expansions????????
 
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