Why Industries are so interested in ARC FLASH Study now??

Hello Friends.

Many of the Electrical engineers have either seen such accidents or at-least listen from other plants. And mostly every month we hear few such incidents where a life has been lost due to flash-over.

Numerous workers/ Technicians are injured and/or killed each year while working on energized equipment. Many of these casualties are a result of arc flash.

A study, investigating a worker’s potential exposure to arc flash energy, conducted for the purpose of injury prevention and the determination of safe work practices and appropriate levels of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment).

However, in addition to all these, Plant Engineers must know about ELECTRICALLY SAFE WORKING CONDITIONS as below:

1. Make sure Equipment is not and CAN NOT be energized.

2. Identify all power sources.

3. Interrupt the load and disconnect power.

4. Visually verify that a disconnect has opened the circuit

5. Use of lock out tag out system (One of the safest procedure to avoid such accidents)

6. Test for absence of voltage.

7. Ground all power conductors, if necessary. (I have seen that in one plant during transformer maintenance The engineer was grounding all the power cable, so that if due to accident supply is on it will trip breaker in earth-fault)

8. Switch remotely if possible.

9. Standing aside and away as much as possible during switching.

10. Avoid leaning on or touching switchgear and metallic surface.

11. Use proper tools and PPE.

12. Check whether tools are properly insulated or not.

For Conducting Arc Flash Study in your plant contact us at [email protected]

Regards

Avinash Singh