How Electrical Studies Help Improve Facility Resilience

Whether in lost production or labor hours, every minute your building is down costs significant money. But what if there was a way to identify potential issues before they become more significant and cost your business money? That’s where electrical studies come in.

Short circuit analysis, coordination studies, arc flash analysis, and power system analysis all help identify vulnerabilities in your building’s electrical system before they lead to outages, equipment damage, safety incidents, and more.

Below, we’ll cover how electrical studies can help improve your commercial and industrial facilities' resilience, including the benefits of routine testing and maintenance.

What are Electrical Studies?

Electrical studies are a comprehensive look at your commercial or industrial facilities’ electrical system. They help assess the system, identify and diagnose potential risks, and develop a mitigation plan to help bring your building back into compliance.

Popular types of electrical studies include the following.

Short circuit analysis detects problem areas within your power system and provides recommended solutions to help mitigate the risks of short circuits.
Coordination studies analyze your circuit breakers and evaluate your risk of faults. The goal of a coordination study is to achieve a balance between equipment protection and operating requirements for your facility’s overall power system.
Arc flash analysis helps identify the specific hazard within a specific piece of equipment experiencing an electric arc. Arc flash analysis often includes short-circuit calculations, protective device coordination, arc flash hazard calculation, documentation, unsafe work locations, and arc flash hazard mitigation.
Power system analysis is a comprehensive evaluation of your building’s electrical system to assess its efficiency. The power system evaluation will compare your system to manufacturer standards and OSHA regulations.

If you are unsure which is best for your facility, contact a professional electrical engineer. They can recommend the best electrical study based on your goals while helping to minimize downtime and reduce costs.

Benefits of Electrical Studies

Whether your building is brand new or decades old, there are many benefits of conducting electrical studies, especially when it comes to improving your facility’s resilience.

Identify Vulnerabilities

The biggest benefit of electrical studies is that they identify vulnerabilities before they become a problem. When done before issues arise, they can be an important form of preventive maintenance, helping you avoid:

Outages, including total facility or phased shutdowns depending on the severity of the electrical issue.
Equipment damage caused by improperly shutting machines down, short circuits, and other power issues that could cause electrical problems.
Safety incidents, including recordable injuries and, in severe cases, even death from electrical shocks.

If any of these happen, it can take hours to days for your building to come back to full speed. However, electrical studies can stop them from happening, allowing you to control how to fix the issues and improving resilience to help your building bounce back quicker - and on your timeline.

Support Strategic Maintenance Planning

If there’s a sudden power outage from a storm, you can’t control that. Hopefully, your facility has a backup generator so you can safely power your systems down to prevent damage. But there are outages and potential damage that you can prevent.

Electrical testing can help identify issues and assess the risk of failure. Based on their findings, you can work with your maintenance team to create an ideal maintenance schedule to address the issue before it fails.

Electrical testing prevents emergency maintenance that can be disruptive to your business and costly to fix. This strategic maintenance planning will take into account the best time to fix the issue while reducing the impact on the business. It could be overnight, on the weekend, or working ahead of production goals so you can have downtime without impacting your business.

Think of electrical testing like peeking underneath the hood. It helps you see what needs to be done on your schedule instead of letting a breakdown derail your careful plans.

Streamline System Upgrades

Similar to strategic maintenance planning, electrical studies can help you streamline your system upgrades. You aren’t guessing at what needs to be fixed. Instead, you have a clear plan based on data to help you target the highest priority updates and create a backlog of lower priority issues to address as time permits.

You can work with your maintenance team on planned downtime to conduct multiple updates, shift power loads, and better utilize your available power capacity. The work can be done in tandem, allowing you to minimize downtime.

When systems fail because they aren’t designed for the current capacity, you have to scramble to get them up and running. Often, you come up with band-aid solutions that are a temporary fix.

With an electrical study, you don’t have to plan what will get your building up the fastest. Instead, you can design a long-term solution to help your facility be more resilient, flexing with the changing needs rather than breaking the next time there is the slightest shift.

Promote Emergency Preparedness

Industrial and commercial facilities often have emergency plans. You and your teams know where to go if there is a severe weather event, fire, or other emergency issue. Electrical studies can be an important part of your emergency preparedness plans.

They can help assess what type of generator you need to keep your facility running in the case of an emergency. That includes what pieces of equipment and electronics are essential to operations, and which can be offloaded until full power is restored.

Your goal in case of an emergency is to prevent damage to essential systems. That way, once the issue is resolved, you can quickly assess the damage and create an action plan to get back to full operations.

Electrical studies can help you build your contingency plans. Hopefully, you’ll never have to use them, but having them will provide peace of mind in case an emergency event occurs.

Enhance Reliable Operations

If your facility is running smoothly, you want to do what you can to keep it that way. Electrical studies can help promote reliable operations.

Your machines won’t fail due to short circuits
Your power system won’t come down because of overloads
Electrical fires won’t happen, leading to property damage
Your people will be safer, not at risk of injury due to an electrical failure

Think of electrical studies like preventative medicine. You get them done to enhance early detection and prevent issues from snowballing over time.

Electrical studies help you plan in advance to mitigate costs and risks. They allow you to see the bigger picture and how enhancing your facility’s electrical systems at the right time can help you scale.

Ultimately, electrical studies help keep your facility running, preventing power failures so you can focus on driving your business forward.

Call in the Electrical Testing Professionals

The professional electrical engineers at MTA are here to help with all your electrical testing needs across San Diego and California. We are the premier team of choice across the West Coast.

Whether you are looking for a comprehensive electrical study, an arc flash analysis of a specific piece of equipment, or something in between, we have you covered. If you aren’t sure what you need, our team of skilled professionals can assess your facility and make informed recommendations based on their findings.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I Need An Electrical Study?

All commercial and industrial facilities would benefit from an electrical study, even if there are no apparent issues. Electrical studies can help identify problems before they become significant, helping save you money and downtime. Based on the findings, you can control when and how to fix the issues based on severity.

What Types of Electrical Studies Are Available?

There are different types of electrical studies available based on your needs. Common types of electrical studies are arc flash analysis, coordination studies, electrical drawings, electrical testing, system evaluation, and short circuit analysis. Electrical engineers can suggest the ideal test based on the problem and goal.

What Are The Benefits of an Electrical Study?

Electrical studies can help identify vulnerabilities before they become costly breakdowns. As a result, you can better plan your maintenance, avoid costly downtime, and reduce electrical injuries. The stronger your plans are, the more reliable your operations and resilient your facility will be.

Who Should I Contact For An Electrical Study?

Electrical engineers can conduct electrical studies in your facility. They are trained to identify, evaluate, and make informed suggestions based on the findings. You should have skilled professionals conduct this job for the best results.