Trade-Offs With Arc Flash Safety, Selective Coordination and Protection

The Balancing Act -
Trade-Offs With Arc Flash Safety, Selective Coordination and Protection
On-Demand Webinar
Originally Offered: Wednesday, November 12, 2008

This presentation explores the relationship between total selective coordination and its impact on arc flash energy in power distribution systems. NFPA 70, the National Electrical Code, prescribes the requirement for total selective coordination with reliability of electrical power systems as a primary goal. Arc flash safety should not be overlooked during the focus on selective coordination requirements. It can be shown that designing a system with total selective coordination in mind can permit high fault currents to persist longer on the electrical distribution system.

Arc flash incident energy increases because these high currents are not cleared as quickly. As part of this exploration, key design decisions are discussed that can help address these issues only when proper selective coordination and arc flash calculations and analysis are performed.

This presentation stresses the ever-increasing importance to understand the limitations of the protective devices being applied and consideration of all aspects of circuit protection when designing electrical power distribution systems to improve both reliability and safety.