Switchgear upgrade advice needed.

[Avaxavax]

Hello,

I am new here and I am not an Electrician.

However, I am an engineer, understand electricity (to a fair degree), and pretty comfortable doing my own residential work.

I am helping assemble an electrification roadmap for a local town who wants to explore replacing all of the traditional natural gas HVAC and Boiler systems in roughly 9 existing school buildings.

We are working with an HVAC vender on understanding the additional electrical loads this will require.

Once I understand the additional load requirements, I do not have the skill set / experience to calculate the upgrade requirements of the switchgear.

I am looking for advice, direction, and maybe even a subject matter expert I can retain as a consultant if it makes sense, but I am starting at ground zero.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks
Jay

 

[Megawatt]

Hello,

I am new here and I am not an Electrician.

However, I am an engineer, understand electricity (to a fair degree), and pretty comfortable doing my own residential work.

I am helping assemble an electrification roadmap for a local town who wants to explore replacing all of the traditional natural gas HVAC and Boiler systems in roughly 9 existing school buildings.

We are working with an HVAC vender on understanding the additional electrical loads this will require.

Once I understand the additional load requirements, I do not have the skill set / experience to calculate the upgrade requirements of the switchgear.

I am looking for advice, direction, and maybe even a subject matter expert I can retain as a consultant if it makes sense, but I am starting at ground zero.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks
Jay

Once you find out the actual amperage of the HVAC and boilers then I can give you the information that you need. At each school what is the amperage of the switch gear. There is not enough information at this time to help you determine what you actually need. Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

 

[Avaxavax]

Once you find out the actual amperage of the HVAC and boilers then I can give you the information that you need. At each school what is the amperage of the switch gear. There is not enough information at this time to help you determine what you actually need. Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Once you find out the actual amperage of the HVAC and boilers then I can give you the information that you need. At each school what is the amperage of the switch gear. There is not enough information at this time to help you determine what you actually need. Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Hi thank you for replying. We definately need more info.

I have the hvac guy doing site tour of all 9 sites on Friday. Once he gets us recommendations we will have an idea of the additional load.

I will get the current amperage for the existing switchgear.

I guess we can look at utility bills to figure out biz as usual consumption as well.

anyway just add existing load and the new load' then tack on 25% Is that it?

What other info do we need to gather? Make models of the current equipment ? Breaker counts and sizes? Not sure all we need?

Again we just need to get ball park numbers for the roadmap. Nothing is actually being installed at this point.

Again thank you for your help thus far!

Jay

 

[Megawatt]

Hi thank you for replying. We definately need more info.

I have the hvac guy doing site tour of all 9 sites on Friday. Once he gets us recommendations we will have an idea of the additional load.

I will get the current amperage for the existing switchgear.

I guess we can look at utility bills to figure out biz as usual consumption as well.

anyway just add existing load and the new load' then tack on 25% Is that it?

What other info do we need to gather? Make models of the current equipment ? Breaker counts and sizes? Not sure all we need?

Again we just need to get ball park numbers for the roadmap. Nothing is actually being installed at this point.

Again thank you for your help thus far!

Jay

Your best bet is to get the total amperage of the main breaker that supplies all the power on the switch gear. You will need to document all the breakers in the gear on how much amperage each one is rated for. I have also experienced some of the breakers in the gear are actually not being used. Could you take a picture of one of the switch gears and post it. Thanks

 

[Avaxavax]

Hi Megawatt, Sorry took so long to reply. I just don't have a good inventory of the switchgear yet. I toured 4 or so of the buildings (About 1/2 of them)

I was mostly on my own and could not locate the mains in most cases. Took lots of pictures that I can post. There were PV systems that I easily found cutoffs for, but not so much on the grid side.

Largest system I saw was a 2000Amp Main breaker, the others I think are 1200.

I have a meeting with the town electrician and trying to put together a spreadsheet for him so they can supply what we need. Trying the best way to organize it, but I was thinking columns would be

Building | Service Type (120/208y) | Panel Name (i.e. Main) | Panel Main Amps | # 600A Breakers | #200A breakers | #100A | #60A | #50A | Remaining A

This way we could look at the building and get an immediate sense of how the power is distributed. I am not sure we need to get down into the sub 200A/100A breakers or what all the different size breakers there can be out there.

Anyway does this seem like a spreadsheet, anything you would add? Comments?

 

[Megawatt]

Hi Megawatt, Sorry took so long to reply. I just don't have a good inventory of the switchgear yet. I toured 4 or so of the buildings (About 1/2 of them)

I was mostly on my own and could not locate the mains in most cases. Took lots of pictures that I can post. There were PV systems that I easily found cutoffs for, but not so much on the grid side.

Largest system I saw was a 2000Amp Main breaker, the others I think are 1200.

I have a meeting with the town electrician and trying to put together a spreadsheet for him so they can supply what we need. Trying the best way to organize it, but I was thinking columns would be

Building | Service Type (120/208y) | Panel Name (i.e. Main) | Panel Main Amps | # 600A Breakers | #200A breakers | #100A | #60A | #50A | Remaining A

This way we could look at the building and get an immediate sense of how the power is distributed. I am not sure we need to get down into the sub 200A/100A breakers or what all the different size breakers there can be out there.

Anyway does this seem like a spreadsheet, anything you would add? Comments?

Sorry for the late reply but I honestly think that you are doing a great job and with what you have listed I’m thinking that the boilers will not pull as much current as the HVAC units. Do they have any open breakers not being used? Looking forward to hearing from you. Good luck

 

[Avaxavax]

Sorry for the late reply but I honestly think that you are doing a great job and with what you have listed I’m thinking that the boilers will not pull as much current as the HVAC units. Do they have any open breakers not being used? Looking forward to hearing from you. Good luck Tell me if this seems reasonable to you?

Sorry for the late reply but I honestly think that you are doing a great job and with what you have listed I’m thinking that the boilers will not pull as much current as the HVAC units. Do they have any open breakers not being used? Looking forward to hearing from you. Good luck

Tell me if you think this is a reasonable idea? We know that any new heat pumps, boilers, electric cooktops we can just assume needs a new electrical path to the equipment. I can just assume new subpanels, brakers, wire, conduit, etc....

I will also assume the main switchgear needs to be upgraded/replaced to support the new additional loads.

I think that works for the purpose of forecasting. Sound reasonable?

But I have no idea how to take swags at costs for installation and any transformer upgrades on the grid side.


Thoughts?

 

[Megawatt]

Hello,

I am new here and I am not an Electrician.

However, I am an engineer, understand electricity (to a fair degree), and pretty comfortable doing my own residential work.

I am helping assemble an electrification roadmap for a local town who wants to explore replacing all of the traditional natural gas HVAC and Boiler systems in roughly 9 existing school buildings.

We are working with an HVAC vender on understanding the additional electrical loads this will require.

Once I understand the additional load requirements, I do not have the skill set / experience to calculate the upgrade requirements of the switchgear.

I am looking for advice, direction, and maybe even a subject matter expert I can retain as a consultant if it makes sense, but I am starting at ground zero.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks
Jay

what part of the US are you located. Maybe I could meet you and take a look at the switch gears and are they a City Electric Supply Company near you or CES. I have an account with them. I’m in NC

 

[Avaxavax]

what part of the US are you located. Maybe I could meet you and take a look at the switch gears and are they a City Electric Supply Company near you or CES. I have an account with them. I’m in NCThe project is in MA, so I would have to fly you up for the day. Which isn't ddddddddddvv

what part of the US are you located. Maybe I could meet you and take a look at the switch gears and are they a City Electric Supply Company near you or CES. I have an account with them. I’m in NC

The budlings are in northeast MA so I would have to fly you up and compensate you for the day, which isn't out of the question, but I am not sure we need to go there yet. My intent would be to compensate you if you do engage in the calculation process (regardless of travel) but I do have a partner who needs to agree to specifics. Again, not quite there yet.

All I need are rough budget numbers so the town can show what converting to all electric looks like over the next 25 years for 9 school buildings. There is no way to give them accurate numbers as this is up to a 25 year projection. So I don't see al point in trying to get down minutia like reuse of spare breakers or repurposing existing sub panels. From a cost perspective let's just assume that the path from the main breaker to the HVAC and Boilers will be completely replaced.

I'm guessing that cost collection is rather straight forward. However, labor gets more complicated as each building has its own specific physical requirements, limitations, hidden problems like asbestos etc... So all I think we can do is assign a reasonable percentage to apply for labor. (Similar to auto mechanics bill the book hours not what the actual hours worked)

The next near impossible item to look at are grid transformer upgrades that will probably be needed on most of the buildings.
National Grid or whomever the utility is will not quote anything that doesn't have full engineering drawings etc...

Ultimately, I think the town wants to demonstrate to those with climate change agendas what the actual costs are of what they are proposing is. These are 75 year old buildings. It doesn't take a lot of common sense to realize this is not a good way to spend the taxpayer's money and you won't get a lot of use out of your investment as the buildings will age out.

 

[Megawatt]

The budlings are in northeast MA so I would have to fly you up and compensate you for the day, which isn't out of the question, but I am not sure we need to go there yet. My intent would be to compensate you if you do engage in the calculation process (regardless of travel) but I do have a partner who needs to agree to specifics. Again, not quite there yet.

All I need are rough budget numbers so the town can show what converting to all electric looks like over the next 25 years for 9 school buildings. There is no way to give them accurate numbers as this is up to a 25 year projection. So I don't see al point in trying to get down minutia like reuse of spare breakers or repurposing existing sub panels. From a cost perspective let's just assume that the path from the main breaker to the HVAC and Boilers will be completely replaced.

I'm guessing that cost collection is rather straight forward. However, labor gets more complicated as each building has its own specific physical requirements, limitations, hidden problems like asbestos etc... So all I think we can do is assign a reasonable percentage to apply for labor. (Similar to auto mechanics bill the book hours not what the actual hours worked)

The next near impossible item to look at are grid transformer upgrades that will probably be needed on most of the buildings.
National Grid or whomever the utility is will not quote anything that doesn't have full engineering drawings etc...

Ultimately, I think the town wants to demonstrate to those with climate change agendas what the actual costs are of what they are proposing is. These are 75 year old buildings. It doesn't take a lot of common sense to realize this is not a good way to spend the taxpayer's money and you won't get a lot of use out of your investment as the buildings will age out.

Well good luck my friend and if you need any assistance in any fashion just let me know.

 

[Rockingit]

Please do remember to account for diversity in all this - with 1200 and 2000A incoming services I’d be surprised if you do actually need to uprate services