Electrical Maintenance
Just because the lights are on doesn’t necessarily mean that your electrical system is healthy!
After your system is installed correctly, per the NEC or NESC, it must be maintained. How do you accomplish that?
Let us help you develop a program for electrical maintenance, according to NFPA 70B.
Hazards and Statistics
According to a National Fire Protection Association, for a report issued in March of 2019 and authored by Richard Campbell, fires involving electrical failures or malfunctions accounted for the highest share of civilian deaths (18%) and direct property damage (20%).
Electrical distribution and lighting equipment was the third leading form of equipment involved in fires… , accounting for 10% of fires (behind cooking equipment and heating equipment).
According to another study from NFPA, Fatal Electrical Injuries at Work, there have been 739 fatalities from exposure to electricity between 2012-2016.
By occupation, workers in construction and extraction occupations made up 47%, and installation, maintenance, and repair occupations were 22%, and accounted for the largest number of deaths.
80% of fatal injuries from direct exposure to electricity occurred while workers were engaged in constructing, repairing, or cleaning activities.
Workers who were fatally injured as a result of indirect exposure to electricity were most often engaged in construction, repairing, or cleaning activities (37%), or were using or operating tools or machinery (32%) at the time of injury.
Let's start with a trained and qualified staff.
Training and qualifications are at the forefront of electrical safety. This is especially true for personnel who are performing maintenance tasks while exposed to electrical hazards. NFPA 70E requires your company’s electrical safety program to consider the condition of maintenance when assessing risk to employees.
Let us help improve your maintenance program by teaching your staff leading edge maintenance techniques. From thermal imaging or infrared (IR), to airborne ultrasonic testing to detect arcing, tracking or corona, while your systems are energized.
Need de-energized testing? We can provide training on that too, including cable and circuit tracing, splicing and terminating, cable testing, circuit breaker testing, insulation integrity and degradation inspections, transformer testing, and oil sampling.
We can provide technical guidance for your program and help establish severity criteria for anomaly detection, problem interpretation, and suggestions for repair, all for the health of your electrical system and the safety of your staff.
Examples of IR inspections taken for maintenance.
Benefits of a Maintained System
According to Hartford Steam Boiler, the failure rate of electrical equipment is three times higher for components that are not part of a scheduled preventive maintenance program as compared with those that are.
Establishing an Electrical Preventive Maintenance (EPM) Program allows the equipment owner to schedule the system outage at a time of their choosing, rather than having to correct major problems resulting from an untimely failure, which usually includes collateral damage to surrounding equipment, facilities, and infrastructure.
An unplanned outage due to an electrical failure could lead to extended downtime, higher replacement costs, and lost revenue.
More than two-thirds of electrical system failures can be prevented by a routine preventive maintenance program.
Don’t wait till it’s too late! Let us help you start your program, establish training requirements, and recommend which inspection techniques can benefit you the most.
