b'Partner News Autumn 2021 33CorporateActive Safety: Proactively protecting buildings from electrical fires and outagesBy Deepak Sharad, Marketing Development and Offer Manager at Schneider ElectricCrisis situations happen every day inAlso, once a fault has occurred, it may take buildings around the world. At the finalan unacceptable amount of time to fix. We distribution levelwhere electrical systemsnow live in a world with unprecedented connect to plug outletsrisks continuetypes of events, such as climate-related to impact safety, resilience, and serviceemergencies and pandemics. In these continuity in all kinds of buildings. The mostsituations, technicians may not be available prominent risks being fires and downtime. on site. Even if they are, they must diagnose the problem, then fix it. During this time, Fires can put lives at risk, especially incustomer experience is affected, and high-density buildings. They can also causerevenues are being lost.significant structural destruction, costly loss of contents, and force operations toThe answer to this, is to take a more shut down for long periods of time. Theproactive approach - addressing risks European Fire Academy (EFA) estimatesbefore they cause problems. This requires 25% of building fires are electrical in origin.more visibility into what is happening inside Equally, outages in critical environments, likeyour electrical panels. You need to access hospitals, can put lives at risk. For facilitiesDeepak Sharadall types of electrical health parameters like data centres, every second of downtimecapable of. The AFDD is now recognisedin a more integrated way, anytime and matters - 24 hours of downtime can costworldwide, becoming part of manyanywhere, even when offsite. Its now over 8.7m. standards, including IEC 62606 since 2013,essential to be alerted if something could and soon under BS 7671 in the UK.go wrong. This new level of visibility requires What if facility personnel were able toheightened connectivity.identify a risk before it caused an outageAFDDs should be installed on a buildings or a fire? Thankfully, emerging technology isfinal circuits close to loads, especially inConnectivity is not optionalmaking this possible. buildings with sleeping accommodations orWe live in an increasingly connected that propagate fire easily, and in locationsworld. Almost every part of a buildings Standard protection:with stores of combustible materials orinfrastructure can now be connected, with good but not good enough irreplaceable goods. powerful analytics that help facility teams Evolving standards and regulations havetake a more digitalised and proactive driven the improvement of electricalHowever, fully protecting buildings andapproach to HVAC, power, and energy protection technology in recent years people from risks is still increasinglymanagement. particularly to protect against arc faults,challenging. Large buildings are complicated one of the most common potential sourcesecosystems with a higher number andBut when it comes to electrical safety, of electrical fires. variety of loadsincreasing the chances ofconnectivity is still often treated as an electrical fault. an option, with communication being In electrical systems there can be problemsimplemented as add-ons only when and with installation, maintenance, aging,To protect, be proactive where the need arises. This needs to weakened or loose connections, accidentalThe traditional approach will not sufficechange. The modern thought process should cable damage, or power sockets in pooranymore. You can no longer wait forbe connectivity by default.conditionany of which can cause an arc toan overload fault to happen, because occur. If left unchecked, a vicious circle canit will mean downtime, loss of revenue,This new level of connectivity needs to occur causing more arcs that eventually leadand negative impact on operations andgo beyond basic remote monitoring and to a fire. customers. And it may also mean a risk toalarming traditionally offered by some the safety of people. While an AFDD canelectrical equipment vendors. To mitigate this risk, the arc fault detectionarrest the immediate risk of an arc fault, device (AFDD) was developed, to detecttechnicians need a faster and more effective arcs much smaller than a circuit breaker isway to respond to the problem.'