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MCC's come through mountain trials01 May 2005Panel and System Building was recently invited to witness type testing of some MCCs at Schneider Electric’s test facility in Grenoble, France. Chris Fitzsimmons tells the storyWhen Laing Utilities made the decision in early 2004 to target the water industry, their first step was to sit down with key partners and asses the requirements of the WIMES (Water Industry Mechanical and Electrical
Standards) group, and the technology implications of those requirements. Laing’s chosen fabricator is
Tegrel, and its component supplier Schneider Electric. Seeing the clear benefit to themselves of Laing / Tegrel getting business in the water industry, Schneider Electric agreed to give Tegrel free access to its testing facilities in the UK and also their LOVAG accredited Volta lab in France.
One of the requirements of the WIMES group is compliance with BS EN 60439-1 - the standard governing low voltage switchgear and control gear assemblies i.e. Motor Control Centres. The common route to proven compliance is Type Testing. A Type Tested Assembly being one made up of proven elements whose designs have been rigorously compared to the requirements of the standard. Once an example of an element has been successfully tested it is then accepted that further reproductions of exactly the same
arrangement will also be compliant with the standard.
An alternative route to compliance is the Partially Type Tested Assembly. This is an assembly made up of either type tested elements or elements which are derivations of type tested elements that have been proven by calculation to be compliant with the standard.
Laing therefore commissioned Tegrel to produce example Motor Control Centre assemblies containing the elements that would commonly be offered to water industry clients. John Candlish, Mark Logstaff and John Surrey, of Tegrel, designed and built the test units and planned the tests. Three test panels, equipped with fuse switches and circuit breakers from Schneider Electric brands, Merlin Gerin and Telemecanique, were submitted for temperature rise and short circuit testing to BS EN 60439-1.
Temperature rise tests were carried out on the example assemblies at Schneider’s Scarborough site, before the panels were shipped out to Grenoble for short circuit testing. Schneider Electric’s LOVAG test site in Grenoble, France, is one of only three locations in Europe where the high currents required for a short-circuit withstand test can be generated. The withstand test consists of a 50kA fault current being held on the assembly for three seconds. This is not the kind of current that can be simply drawn from a national power grid, therefore the test site has it’s own generator plant. Schneider Electric has recently invested in
excess of EUR 69M in their Grenoble facility to make it one of the most advanced testing centres in the world.
“This is truly heavy duty testing and required three generators,” explained John Candlish, sales manager of Tegrel. “We had to inject current through everything, including the vertical and horizontal bus bars. If any of the tests failed, we’d see copper
resemble a piece of string.”
Panel builders, independent engineering consultants and electrical engineers also witnessed the testing. “To produce such busbars and MCCs is real craftsmanship,” commented water industry consultant and electrical engineer, John Eley. “If you don’t get this just right, the consequences can be disastrous.
These panels didn’t budge during testing and end users can feel very confident when the metalwork is as good as this.”
The successful completion of the tests proves the design capability of the MCC panels and makes Tegrel unique in its field in being able to prove BS EN 60439-1 compliance, in particular associated with temperature rise with incoming ACB sections. Tony Ciardiello, water segment marketing manager of
Schneider Electric commented, “No other metalwork manufacturer has carried out such extensive testing. This proves the metalwork is protecting the components as it should and that the fuse switches and circuit breakers are performing as they should.”
Tom Dennison, engineering manager of Laing, also witnessed the testing. “We can now provide these
configurations to our clients and they can be assured that they will safely comply with the requirements specified within the BS60439-1 standard,” he stated. “Thanks to Schneider Electric and Tegrel, these configurations can now form the basis of meeting specifications of the WIMES group.”
Colin Cumming, principle electrical engineer of Southern Water was highly impressed with the testing facilities. He enthused: “I’m very impressed with what I have seen here and with the commitment demonstrated by Schneider Electric and Tegrel. As a result I will be recommending their services to the
WIMES group.”
PSB recently caught up with John Candlish and asked him how things had proceeded since the testing was completed. Tegrel are currently awaiting final confirmation of the test results and the official LOVAG certification. Once this arrives they can justifiably feel confident in approaching potential clients with a robust, standards compliant, MCC offering.
- Schneider Electric (www.schneider-electric.com)
- Tegrel (www.tegrel.co.uk)
- Laing Utilities (www.laingorourke.com) Contact Details and Archive...Most Viewed Articles... |
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