Our core principle focuses on proven electrical design solutions for low, medium, and high voltage electrical systems. Our design philosophy is always based on your requirements as well as inter-discipline coordination, constructability, and practicality of operation and maintenance.

A safe, reliable, and properly designed electrical system is vital to ensuring the success of your mission whether it be power delivery, power generation or conversion, manufacturing, or process and plant services.   We recognize that your facility has specific requirements, which are unique to you whether it is bulk power, local campus-type distribution, requirements for mission-critical reliability, industrial process automation, life safety, or fulfilling essential public services.  As new technologies emerge and regulations change, your team must have a modern solution that is realistic, practical, and constructible.  Our added experience and understanding of complex electrical systems from both the construction and equipment manufacturing perspectives allows us to design your facilities per your specific requirements thereby allowing you to achieve operational excellence.

Our core competencies:

An effective electrical design should consider personnel safety, equipment protection, power reliability, inter-discipline coordination, and overall constructability with the interaction of all trades included for ease of operation and maintenance.  Beyond a typical MEP design service for a general-purpose application, a custom design for your complex electrical system should consider:

  • Personnel Safety. Considerations to ensure that your maintenance electricians are protected against electrocution and arc flash hazards. Implementation of sensitive ground fault protection, zone selective interlocking, high-speed differential relaying, arc energy reduction switches, fiber optic arc flash sensors, or arc-resistant switchgear should be considered in designs where safety during frequent operation or intervention is paramount.

  • Protection and Control. Solutions of your critical equipment for resilience against both minor and catastrophic faults through the use of adaptive P&C schemes including dual relaying, differential protection, pilot transfer trip (PTT), direct transfer trip (DTT), line impedance monitoring, negative sequence, and other advanced specialized schemes.

  • Power Reliability. Solutions to ensure minimal impact on your facilities and processes in the event of a utility power interruption. This might include the application of automatic source transfer controls, closed transition restoration, automatic generator starting and synchronization, static UPS systems, or other types of stored energy systems.

  • Inter-Discipline Coordination. Design methodology to properly apply and specify electrical equipment such as motor control centers and variable frequency drives to match the control requirements of your mechanical and industrial process equipment such as pumps, boilers, conveyors, mixers, fans, cranes, propulsion systems, and other types of heavy machinery.

  • Quality Control. Rigorous procedures using a true and tested method of collaboration between our in-house professional engineers and master electricians to assure that your electrical facilities are not subject to variations, deviations, or complications with the AHJ during construction.

  • Operation and Maintenance. Practicality to allow your facility staff to confidently use the electrical equipment with relative ease for many years. When construction budgets allow it, our design solutions include provisions for the future expansion of your system.

  • Instrumentation & Control (I&C) and SCADA Integration. Schemes allow remote automation and monitoring of the entire electrical system from a centralized location with data exchange to establish real-time electrical system trending or to validate your overall functionality.

A representational list of our design projects:

Water & Wastewater Facilities
  • WSSC Parkway Water Resource Recovery Facility – Laurel, MD (Learn More)
  • Little Ferry Water Pollution Control Facility – Little Ferry, NJ
  • Front Royal Wastewater Treatment Plant – Front Royal, VA
Healthcare Facilities
  • St. Mary’s Hospital – Waterbury, CT (Learn More)
  • Shady Grove Hospital – Rockville, MD

    • Data Centers
    • AIG Data Center – Reston, VA
    • SWIFT Data Center – Manassas, VA
    • SABEY Data Center – Ashburn, VA
    • VAMC Information Technology Center – Philadelphia, PA
    Facility Generation, Distribution, and System Automation
    • Quantico Marine Corps Base – Quantico, VA
    • Intelsat G30 Facilities – Washington DC
    • NAVFAC Naval Support Facility – Dahlgren, VA

    Our blogs related to design solutions:

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    How a Zig-Zag Transformer Will Benefit the Electrical System at Your Campus Facility

    An enhanced grounding scheme not only helps protect your people and your electrical equipment, as per the NEC, but it also helps maintain sequential tripping, ensure maximum service continuity during faults, and minimize nuisance tripping and disturbances. An enhanced grounding scheme contains system faults within a localized area of the electrical distribution system.

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    cogenerationfacility
    How to Save Money Using a Cogeneration Facility and Ensure Effective Anti-Islanding Protection

    Most industrial and commercial facilities consume sizable amounts of electricity to fulfill their goals. These facilities are often equipped with a standby generator that is called into operation during an interruption of the incoming utility supply. However, when these facilities are equipped with a cogeneration system, specialized design and system protection aspects must be considered.

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    wastewaterfacilities
    How to Design Electrical Infrastructure for Wastewater Facilities and Save Money Doing It

    You’ve got three aspects to consider when building or upgrading your wastewater treatment facility: standards, equipment, and design. By focusing more time on the design, you can save money on construction because a proper design will permit less rigorous equipment.

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    All Transformers are Not Created Equal – How to Tell Which One is Best for You
    All Transformers are Not Created Equal – How to Tell Which One is Best for You

    A transformer is an essential component of any electrical system. A transformer transfers electricity from one circuit to another while adjusting the voltage level. Transformers are used in a wide array of applications including power transmission and distribution for electrical facilities. The operating principle of a transformer is based on Faraday’s Law of Electromagnetic Induction.

    Read More →

    Testimonials from our design clients:

    “Helios Electric has been a great resource for our business.  Their knowledge in switchgear protection and control far surpasses several engineers we have worked with in the past. They do not over-engineer but provide the absolute best solution for our customer’s application.   This has resulted in cost savings and increased functionality for our clients.”

    Manufacturer’s Representative (Baltimore, MD)

    “I would like to thank Helios Electric for their dedication and design excellence as part of our team on the Progressive Design-Build Delivery of the WSSC Parkway Project.  Helios went above and beyond to ensure that the design documents, major equipment submittals, contractor means and methods, owner expectations and RFP requirements all coincided perfectly.  We look forward to future design-build opportunities with them as our strategic partner.”

    Electrical Contractor (Gaithersburg, MD)