Your building will occasionally call for a temporary electricity solution. Utility power surges, mechanical difficulties, and severe weather can cause electricity to be unavailable from minutes, to potentially hours. Backup services, such as generators, make it easier to deal with these outages. Loss of power is undesirable if you own a commercial building or manufacturing business. An outage can put your business processes or production line on hold. If this happens unexpectedly, pertinent equipment may be damaged. You can lose important data, money, and workers could be injured.
Most daily processes rely on electricity to some extent. A major city failure or disaster can be devastating to any business. Temporary power services allow your most essential building items to function until electricity can be restored. Regular maintenance is a must to keep these systems ready for operation.
Emergency Power Equipment Testing: Why Must Load Evaluations Be Performed?
Emergency power equipment testing can be performed in many ways. The use of devices to obtain readings from components is the most efficient method for determining their current condition. Breakers, automatic transfer switches, and load performance may all be accomplished through fairly non-evasive testing. The automatic transfer switch needs to be tested in action to ensure it will turn on the generator when power goes out.
Various devices are used to test the functionality of breakers. This equipment also assists in measuring current rates and other items affecting the performance of a backup generator. Load testing ensures the system can operate at maximum capacity without posing any harm. A diesel generator sometimes develops carbon buildup, which could cause a fire during normal capacity operation. This particular type of testing checks for the problem and allows service professionals to remove the buildup when present.
Load bank is an emergency power equipment testing procedure used to determine if your system components can operate correctly during the application of different load sizes. This testing can help in detection of serious generator issues, such as wet stacking, and is a great tool for troubleshooting system problems. It is applied to diesel fueled units because they are prone to wet stacking. This term refers to the escape of fuel into generator exhaust pipes during the combustion cycle, and occurs when the temperature or pressure is not significant enough at time of combustion.
Piston ring expansion does not complete the seal, and unburned fuel accumulation in the exhaust is a fire hazard. Systems not run under normal load conditions are prone to this problem. Testing must be performed at normal or high load capacities to prevent fuel buildup. Once fuel has accumulated, it could ignite when the generator is running with an adequate load.
Load bank testing allows the generator to operate at a sufficient capacity. Doing so burns off any accumulated fuel and prevents the ignition when the system is actually needed. Prime Power professionals can perform load bank testing in addition to many other types of servicing. A technician may inspect, test, and run the generator during a service call. These processes should be performed monthly by one of our professionals to make certain temporary power services are ready for use.
