Switch gear maintenance

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With regard to whether there is a requirement, NEC 110.3(B) requires the operator to follow instructions associated with the listing. Most manufacturers require maintenance.
 
krlyle1 said:
Is there a requirement for periodic maintenance on switch gears and Breakers and ATS either in the NEC or 70E
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From the 70E standpoint, ALL of your Arc Flash Assessments must be based upon the following 4 criteria (with regards to the equipment itself):

  • The equipment is properly installed and,
  • The equipment has been properly maintained and,
  • All covers for all equipment are in place and secured and
  • There is no evidence of impending failure
Then there is another requirement that assessments must be done no more than every 5 years.

There is a huge issue out there with the "properly maintained" aspect of this, because if you have really old equipment made by a company that no longer exists, it can be nearly impossible to determine what the proper maintenance would be and if it HAS been done up until the point of your assessment. A lot of companies are getting rude awakenings in this regard.
 
Jraef said:
There is a huge issue out there with the "properly maintained" aspect of this, because if you have really old equipment made by a company that no longer exists, it can be nearly impossible to determine what the proper maintenance would be and if it HAS been done up until the point of your assessment. A lot of companies are getting rude awakenings in this regard.
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I have maintenance manuals for just about any switchgear made since WWII if anyone ever needs something.

As far as testing, most companies follow the NETA reliability based maintenance intervals, note this is only for PM's and does not include overhaul requirements that are unique to each OEM and model
 
The reason I asked we are getting push back from our IT dept. asking if it is required or recommended. in other words they don't want to shut down the Data Center. We have always done this on a 3 year cycle for the 24 years I've worked here.

Thanks
Kevin
 
krlyle1 said:
The reason I asked we are getting push back from our IT dept. asking if it is required or recommended. in other words they don't want to shut down the Data Center. We have always done this on a 3 year cycle for the 24 years I've worked here.

Thanks
Kevin
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Sounds like it is time to renovate so the data center is concurrently maintainable (Uptime Tier 3).
 
krlyle1 said:
The reason I asked we are getting push back from our IT dept. asking if it is required or recommended. in other words they don't want to shut down the Data Center. We have always done this on a 3 year cycle for the 24 years I've worked here.

Thanks
Kevin
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There is no "law" that says you have to do anything, there is also no law saying you ever have to change the oil in your car.
 
krlyle1 said:
The reason I asked we are getting push back from our IT dept. asking if it is required or recommended. in other words they don't want to shut down the Data Center. We have always done this on a 3 year cycle for the 24 years I've worked here.

Thanks
Kevin
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They probably need to build a redundant data center in another state so they can shut down one of them for maintenance or when it gets hit by a meteor.

I always get a kick out of the extent companies will go to with backup power, etc., but build 5 feet above a flood plain so at best they will be an island no one can get to when the big flood comes.

or they are near a fault line.
 
krlyle1 said:
The reason I asked we are getting push back from our IT dept. asking if it is required or recommended. in other words they don't want to shut down the Data Center. We have always done this on a 3 year cycle for the 24 years I've worked here.

Thanks
Kevin
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This is an excellent opportunity to test whether contingency plans will work. Don't they have redundancy, somewhere?
 
zog said:
There is no "law" that says you have to do anything, there is also no law saying you ever have to change the oil in your car.
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Meh, there is a law that says any employer MUST have a program for electrical safety and that program has requirements that must be followed, one of which is for the program having a plan to mitigate the risks of Arc Flash and to use a "consensus standard" such as NFPA 70E. So does the Federal Law that OSHA enforces say you HAVE TO periodically test your gear? Not directly, but indirectly yes.

Zog; I should have thought of you when I had a conversation about this last week. Want to engage in a challenge on bizarre old gear? Customer has taken over an old WWI era Navy base (Treasure Island) and they are retrofitting the old buildings to house small businesses. Some of them were built for the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in 1915. He is freaking out about finding design specs and maintenance procedures on the old switchgear made by Butte Electric and Manufacturing in San Francisco, who from what I can tell, may have gone defunt during or after WWII. If you have anything of theirs, this guy would likely pay you to fly out here and do a survey, then help them bring it into compliance so that they don't have to rip and replace.
 
krlyle1 said:
The reason I asked we are getting push back from our IT dept. asking if it is required or recommended. in other words they don't want to shut down the Data Center. We have always done this on a 3 year cycle for the 24 years I've worked here.

Thanks
Kevin
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That's why you design in redundant power systems. The problem is, when I have seen designs for Data Centers that don't have this and raised the question, it's always purported to be a cost savings decision.

Where's that cost savings now?
 
krlyle1 said:
The reason I asked we are getting push back from our IT dept. asking if it is required or recommended. in other words they don't want to shut down the Data Center.
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Ask them how they feel about an unplanned shutdown.... And can you also get the HVAC people on-board to do maintenance at the same time?

I've been on the IT side of the fence, but was almost always willing to do a full shutdown if there was a good reason (y2k was not one of them) and enough time to plan. Sure, it's a lot of work, but unless everything is on UPS, it'll happen eventually; better to try the shutdown/restart plan in a controlled & scheduled environment than after a blizzard/earthquake/flood.

(Does also bring the question of how much redundancy is built into the data center and whether the IT side has used it. I've seen lines of cabinets that either didn't have redundant PDUs or did but the servers were plugged into only one side, not both. I'll bet that more of their concern.)

You're almost doing them a favor :D.
 
Minimum maintenance requirements may be dictated by the property insurer. I would check with the person who manages the site insurance programs.
 
As another BTW moment-

A friend worked on a Yahoo data center shutdown maybe seven years ago; it was going to be down for less than 12 hours for all kinds of building stuff. His job? Identifying and tagging each piece of powered equipment in the center, running down the owner/operator inside of Yahoo, and making sure they could shutdown/restart it all. Turned out some systems hadn't been down for 3-4 years, they just sat there and worked.

Took him over three months full-time.

I'd put some money on this IT group not having good records or procedures.
 
zbang said:
Ask them how they feel about an unplanned shutdown....
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Absolutely. If they care about it staying online that's exactly why it needs planned maintenance.

Everything eventually fails. You can either make the decision to shut down to get ahead of the failures, or else the equipment will make the decision for you when it breaks.

If you're looking for guidance NETA MTS and NFPA 70B are good places to start.
 
krlyle1 said:
The reason I asked we are getting push back from our IT dept. asking if it is required or recommended. in other words they don't want to shut down the Data Center. We have always done this on a 3 year cycle for the 24 years I've worked here.

Thanks
Kevin
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Our company data centres didn’t want us to shut off power, the argument went on for months until fate took a hand. During a snow storm both 132kV grid feeders failed blacking out the site and the local town for three days.

A couple of years later I had to swap 11kV plant feeders, I didn’t even bother to tell the IT department. Power went off, the UPS kicked in, once the power was on feeder 2 the ATS swapped over and life continued as normal.

IT think they’re the top of the pile and all electrical staff should bow down to them. Such a pity we control the supply.
 
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