Protect Your Process and Your People
November 4, 2019When you look at an electrical system, what most people want can be summed up in three categories:
- The system must provide power to my business, customers, etc. without interruption
- The system should be as safe as it can be (at a lower cost is a bonus!)
- The system is, ideally, cost effective and efficient
One (of many) aspects of a system that touch on all three categories is its grounding option. There are three options for grounding and they all have their benefits as well as drawbacks. Ungrounded systems do not interrupt power supply, allowing for key processes to continue during a fault. While this prevents lost production time ($$$) the system is an arc-flash threat due to transient over voltage. Solidly Grounded systems make it easy to find and isolate ground faults, but can result in extremely high fault currents that will damage equipment or injure/kill workers. Resistance Grounded systems do not interrupt process, protect against arc-flash, and make it easy to isolate ground faults. Why, considering it has the main advantages of other options, isn’t resistance grounding the default choice?
This superior grounding option is seen as having a higher cost. To address this misconception we can review three different aspects of cost: installation cost, operational cost and avoidance cost.
Installation Cost
The basic sample system below comprises of a Lighting Panel, a Product Distribution Panel and 2 Motor Control
Centers. We can list the added costs and the savings between solidly grounded and resistance grounded
Operational Cost
Downtime is expensive, especially when it isn’t planned! Process continuity during a single phase to ground
fault can save you thousands of dollars.
Sector | Interruption Cost/ Hour |
---|---|
Automotive | $15,000 |
Food and Beverage | $16,420 |
Plastics and Molding | $7,600 |
Pulp and Paper | $14,000 |
Ticket Reservations | $72,000 |
Data Centers | $474,000 |
Systems where ground faults are controlled to a low level (through resistance), reduces equipment repair costs. No more damaging your equipment!
Avoidance Cost
One insurance company reported 228 instances of ground faults leading to losses over a 7 year period.
There were 156 losses involving industrial facilities with an average loss of $769,230. The losses including costs associated
with equipment damage, process interruptions, spoiled product, employee retraining and medical costs.
To Summarize:
- High Resistance Grounding ensures process continuity in the event of a single ground fault
- Advanced HRG technology available from I-Gard ensures continuity of your most critical process even if there is a second ground fault,
avoiding the cost of interruptions and saving thousands per hour. - High Resistance Grounding has a lower installation cost than solidly grounded systems.
- High Resistance Grounding lowers equipment repair costs.
- High Resistance Grounding reduces the likelihood of an arc flash event by 95%, saving people and avoiding
equipment damage. - High Resistance Grounding is the safest option, the option that provides the highest level of reliability and the
economical option.