Improving surge protection

While the most destructive forms of transient surges are typically lightning and utility load switching, these two events are thought to account for just 20 percent of all transient surge activity. The remaining 80 percent occurs in the supposed safety of the factory walls. So, how can plant managers protect their equipment from its own production line?

Here, Simone Bruckner, Managing Director of Cressall, investigates.

Internally generated transients are often caused by commonly used equipment in offices, medical facilities, and factories. From something as simple as lights being switched on and off, to welders in a production line, surge activity is ever present. Surges can cause data loss, residual current device (RCD) tripping, reduced machinery life, and equipment failure. 

Let’s talk transients

Transient overvoltages are short duration, high-magnitude voltage peaks with fast-rising edges, commonly referred to as surges. These overvoltages can reach up to 6,000V on a low-voltage network, with a duration of just a millisecond.

While lightning strikes offer an extreme example, electrical equipment is continually stressed by hundreds of transients that occur every day on the power supply network, through switching operations of inductive loads, such as air-conditioning units, motors and transformers...

Read the full article in PBSI's November issue

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