Moderators this is my first post so if this is the wrong forum please move it to the correct forum. Thanks.
I work at a large university research facility in MA. We are currently serviced by five 2500kva substations and one 3150kva substation. We also have a 350kw diesel generator for critical loads. In our hayday we would run at a constant load of 4 - 6 megawatts but recently we have only been running at under 1 megawatt. Our six substations are located approximately 300 feet from each other and our facility stretches about 1/4 mile and each services it's own section of the facility. We currently have a "Facility Shunt Trip System" that consists of approximately 35 trip buttons located at all exterior doors, service locations and critical load areas. These FTB's (facility trip buttons) open ALL six of our main disconnect switches, our 23KV incoming line recloser and a redundant 23KV air whip switch. The FTB also LOCKS OUT our existing generator as well. This system is designed to kill ALL the electrical power sources to our facility except for our battery powered emergency exit lights and some night lights. This system has worked flawlessly for over 35 years and has been used in many emergency situations to prevent injury to personnel and to protect our very expensive research equipment.
We are about to add a new High Capacity Computing area to our facility. This area will be located in one of our existing buildings and will have an "estimated" load of approximately 2 megawatts. It will also include an additional 350KW generator for critical loads as well as 120KW of UPS power. The current engineering design calls for the area to have local emergency off buttons located in several location in the compute facility which will kill ONLY the compute facility and will not be integrated into our facility FTB circuit. I believe the two systems should be integrated together and have the same function.
What is required by the NEC and since the NEC is "minimum" requirement is there any reason not to integrate these two systems? Thanks Ken
I work at a large university research facility in MA. We are currently serviced by five 2500kva substations and one 3150kva substation. We also have a 350kw diesel generator for critical loads. In our hayday we would run at a constant load of 4 - 6 megawatts but recently we have only been running at under 1 megawatt. Our six substations are located approximately 300 feet from each other and our facility stretches about 1/4 mile and each services it's own section of the facility. We currently have a "Facility Shunt Trip System" that consists of approximately 35 trip buttons located at all exterior doors, service locations and critical load areas. These FTB's (facility trip buttons) open ALL six of our main disconnect switches, our 23KV incoming line recloser and a redundant 23KV air whip switch. The FTB also LOCKS OUT our existing generator as well. This system is designed to kill ALL the electrical power sources to our facility except for our battery powered emergency exit lights and some night lights. This system has worked flawlessly for over 35 years and has been used in many emergency situations to prevent injury to personnel and to protect our very expensive research equipment.
We are about to add a new High Capacity Computing area to our facility. This area will be located in one of our existing buildings and will have an "estimated" load of approximately 2 megawatts. It will also include an additional 350KW generator for critical loads as well as 120KW of UPS power. The current engineering design calls for the area to have local emergency off buttons located in several location in the compute facility which will kill ONLY the compute facility and will not be integrated into our facility FTB circuit. I believe the two systems should be integrated together and have the same function.
What is required by the NEC and since the NEC is "minimum" requirement is there any reason not to integrate these two systems? Thanks Ken
