Field Services
We provide field services to modernize and extend the useful life of aging electrical infrastructure. As an alternative to the complete replacement of your electrical equipment, field services can help you achieve significant cost savings attributed to capital project expenditure as well as to reduce the downtime associated with equipment changeover.
Quality components tend to exhibit a long service life. Well-maintained electrical equipment is often in good condition but may lack modern functionalities that could be benefiting you. Instead of costly equipment replacement and extended downtime to achieve your desired functionalities, we can design and implement turnkey retrofit solutions to provide you with enhanced benefits such as improved protection, improved reliability, and SCADA integration that was previously not available. Not only does our manufacturing expertise help you extend the useful life of electrical equipment, our retrofit services will also save you on capital expenses, reduce construction duration, and minimize downtime of your critical facility operations.
Our core competencies in Field Services:
Switchgear Retrofit
Retrofit of switchgear includes circuit breaker refurbishment, circuit breaker retro-fill, and the modernization of solid-state devices, interposing relays, protective relays, surge protection, and metering devices. Retrofit services can also include the installation of remote operation equipment, power system automation, best battery systems, complex logic schemes, and features to reduce arc flash incident energy levels.
MCC Retrofit
Retrofit of a motor control center includes starter/contactor refurbishment, contactor retro-fill, elementary control schematic modification, replacement of starter buckets, circuit breaker modification, and the modernization of solid-state devices, interposing relays, thermal overloads, and metering devices. Retrofit services can also include the installation of remote operation equipment, source transfer controls, and features to reduce the arc flash incident energy levels.
System Protection Retrofit
Retrofit of a protection system includes the replacement of electromechanical relays, legacy solid-state relays, and trip units within existing electrical equipment lineups. Using digital multifunction relays, advanced features such as SCADA network integration, differential protection, frequency protection, line impedance monitoring, directional power and current, negative sequence, intertie protection, phase reversal, and other advanced specialized schemes can be established.
Automation Retrofit
Automation retrofit consists of implementing programmable logic or automation controllers (PLC or PAC), human machine interfaces (HMI), and other intelligent electronic devices (IED) to existing electrical equipment lineups. By doing so, power reliability can be enhanced by establishing automatic source transfer controls, generator automation controls, adaptive protection schemes, base-load demand response schemes, and SCADA connectivity.
SCADA and RTU Retrofit
SCADA and RTU retrofit consists of establishing connectivity of an electrical system’s intelligent devices to a data collection and display system. By doing so, electrical system conditions can be monitored in real-time without requiring manual intervention, which in turn, allows a quicker diagnosis of any pending electrical system issues to achieve greater reliability of facility operations.
Arc Flash Mitigation
Modifications to existing electrical equipment can help mitigate the hazards associated with arc flash by reducing the magnitude of the arc fault current and/or reducing the total device clearing time of system protection elements. This can include the installation of line reactors or the implementation of arc energy reduction switches, differential relaying, fiber optic flash sensing, zone selective interlocking, and other types of advanced protection schemes.
Industrial electrical distribution systems consist of complex equipment that supply power to various facility loads. Such electrical equipment is vital to maintain your production, process, and revenue stream. We can help inspect and objectively analyze the condition of your existing electrical infrastructure to determine which of our core competencies best suits your needs. Well maintained systems can benefit from retrofits that offer useful life extension. Electrical sub-systems can be made more reliable and robust by retrofitting components that have a known ‘bad track record. Other types of field services offer modernization of the existing power system, which improve system protection or establish means of monitoring via SCADA. Some modernizations also allow existing switchgear or other apparatus to comply with the latest requirements of NEC or NFPA 70E. Retrofitting to provide arc flash mitigation is one of the most common field service tasks. Other such examples include:
Protective Device Upgrades. Replacement of existing electromechanical relays, solid-state protective relays, and trip units with digital multi-function devices can deliver enhanced protection such as zone-selective interlocking, high-speed differential relaying, trip coil monitoring, event recording, synchrophasor trending, and fault locating.
Enhanced System Controls. Modification of existing hardwired AC/DC controls with PLC or PAC overlay schemes can establish complex load shed & load adds schemes during generator operation as well as automatic source transfer schemes such as the transfer to alternate sources in the event of a utility outage, closed-transition utility restoration, or seek the live source capability.
SCADA Integration. Modification of existing electrical control circuits can establish integration with a remote SCADA system for monitoring electrical system conditions and establish data exchange for real-time electrical system trending and to validate overall functionality.
Equipment Upgrades. Retrofit of existing motor control center lineups, variable frequency drives, and control systems associated with industrial facilities can ensure the functionality of upgraded process equipment such as pumps, boilers, conveyors, mixers, fans, cranes, propulsion systems, and other types of heavy machinery.
Equipment Enhancements. Retrofit of existing switchgear lineups, rectifiers, frequency converters, and associated components can establish functionality associated with modifications and upgrades undertaken to AC and DC traction power systems used in railway electrification.
Power System Enhancements. Retrofit of existing switchgear lineups with modified controls and intertie protection schemes can establish electrical connectivity with renewable ‘green power’ sources such as solar photovoltaic, cogeneration, or combined heat & power (CHP) systems.
