Tutorial III

Introduction & Application Considerations for the New & Better IEEE 1584-2018 Arc-Flash Model

Date and Time

Date Time
Start 22 May 8:00 a.m.
End 22 May 12:00 p.m.

 

Instructors

Marcelo E. Valdés

IEEE Fellow, Cornell University-1977, BS EE. Mr. Valdés was with GE 41 years in field engineering, sales, product management, marketing and application engineering. Since July 2018 he is with ABB’s Electrical Products division. Mr. Valdés is past chair of various IEEE PES and IAS chapters in Northern California and the 2014 IEEE Electrical Safety Workshop (IEEE-ESW). Mr. Valdés chairs the IEEE 1683-2014 working group “IEEE P1683 Guide for Specification and Selection of Low Voltage Motor Control Centers with Enhanced Safety Features” and is active in various other IEEE working groups, mostly in electrical safety and electrical systems protection including IEEE 1584 where he was one of the chairs of the model validation task group for the 2018 edition.
 

 

Albert Marroquin

Albert is a registered professional engineer in California. He is the designer and product manager for ETAP’s AC, DC and High Voltage Arc Flash Analysis products. Albert is a working group member of IEEE P1584, IEEE P1458, IEEEP1814 and an active attendee of NFPA 70E seminars and meetings. He is a member of NFPA’s electrical branch. Albert has spent the last five years serving as the new IEEE P1584 Arc-Flash Model Validation Task Group Vice-Chair and Ballot Resolution Committee Co-Chair. Albert joined ETAP in January of 2001 as an electrical engineer and has over 18 years of power system analysis and software design. Albert is the electrical safety and dynamic-system engineering division manager.

About the tutorial

A new challenge is ahead for the electrical safety community! The fully revised IEEE Std. 1584, Guide to Performing Arc-Flash Hazard Calculations is complete and was released on November of 2018. Engineers everywhere will need to learn to apply this new, more complex, model. After almost two decades of using the first 1584 model, practicing engineers may be asking why the arcing current and thermal incident energy calculations are so different! 

The new arc-flash model resulted from an NFPA and IEEE collaboration effort to improve the accuracy of incident energy calculations and improve how the calculations reflect real world situations. When implementing the 2002 model, engineers realized that it did not fully reflect all encountered equipment configurations in potentially important ways. The research project, which involved ~ 2000 short circuit tests, resulted in the new 2018 model. The previously modeled vertical conductors in a box and open air are now expanded by 3 new model configurations; vertical conductors in a box terminating in an insulating barrier (VCBB), horizontal conductors in a box (HCB) and in open-air (HOA). If present in installations, these configurations may result in higher energy impinging on the worker and may require higher PPE arc rating selections. The new laboratory testing performed by IEEE and NFPA led to the development of a new model to represent the physical behavior of arc current and incident energy in the 5 different configurations. It also includes a refined model for the arcing current to available fault power relationship, associated arc current variation as well as enclosure size effects on the incident energy. Yet, the model is a model of laboratory behavior and that also should be considered.

The tutorial will feature first-hand insight into the background of the laboratory testing and model development to help engineers understand how and why the arc current and incident energy results may be different when compared to the IEEE 1584-2002 model. Furthermore, discussion will take place on what is perhaps the most difficult application consideration of the new model; which is the detection and classification of actual equipment into one of the five electrode configurations.

Additional Information

 

IEEE vTools site