I'm doing a set of line drawings for my customer on their power distribution. Nothing is marked and no doc's at all which is weird because I know the guy that did most of it and it would have been required by the city but he's dead now.
Anyway, there are a lot of dead panels on the front of the building that were left there after the new 800 amp main was put in about 15 years ago. As I was going through them I found one that was live. It used to be the main meter panel when the building was divided.
The feeders on the left are 250mcm coming from somewhere. My guess is that it's coming from the pad mount and is aluminum which Edison uses. Coming out of the breaker is probably 2/0 at least and maybe 3/0 THHN which all makes sense with 200 amps. The 2/0 loops back and goes down the 2" conduit on the right which goes into the ground. There is about 35 amps on all 3 legs. I have located all of the sub panels in the building and cannot find where this goes. Wherever it goes, something is getting free electricity.
I'm moving the discussion from another thread that was unrelated. APLMAN posted some pics. What is the voltage on that panel? I have 120/208 4 wire on this one.
I also figured SEEMEFIRST would take an interest which he did.
Oh crap, I’m the WRONG guy for technical questions. I just manage the plant! We brought in a handful of working engineers when this happened and they explained some of it to me at the 3rd grade level, and that went over my head mostly.
I'm going to guess that it's probably 120/208 also but could be 277/480 too. That would be a Fbunch of amps at 480. What the hell kind of machines are in that shop?
How bizarre!
35 amps all the time? Sounds like some kind of pump maybe. Whatever it is, it seems like it would be hard to hide.
So, this is an existing property that someone is moving into? The city should have a permit on file for something that big, if they did it above board.
Are you sure it's 208 and not 240 3phase? That they tapped the one leg leads me to think it would have been a 240 and the tapped wire being the crazy leg.
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It could be 4 wire 3 Phase 208.
And could it be being fed after the new 800amp panel? we had this situation in a building we were in that was built in 76. When we outgrew the initial panel, a new panel was installed and it fed the initial panel as it was cheaper to do it that way than to rewire all the existing equipment that was just fine before the increased demand situation. And, possibly the original voltage was 240 and then changed to 208 during the life of the building.
Well, our 208 has 3 wires measure 120v to ground, 1 neutral, and 1 ground (usually go the same place)
Our 240 has 2 wires measure 120 to ground and 1 wire measure 177v (crazy leg) to ground. It would get marked.
Here's the info on the switch. We have 3 of these, currently running on 2 of them. They power pretty much the entire plant except for the offices, breakrooms, etc. I'm told that the replacement will be just about $385K.
This is a building that the company moved into at least 15 years ago. A lot of shit has happened since then including melting the feeders to the 800 amp panel a couple of years ago. There is a 225kva 208/480 transformer coming of that panel too. When they run a certain product, that transformer gets tagged pretty hard. They just keep buying equipment and I keep telling them you are out of power. Edison was not happy about their feeders getting melted. When they pulled the new feeders in, I don't remember seeing the other set going to the mystery panel while they had the pad mount opened up. Maybe I was too busy getting chewed out by the Edison big shot for not telling them about our new equipment. It's an 800 amp panel dumbass. feed it with the right size wire. I had to keep my mouth shut though because he was threatening to not heat us back up. This place runs minimum 20 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Oh, yeah.
I misunderstood that you were talking about a high leg. Drive by post...
I'm curious as to what is currently running in the building. That's a lot of power, and if the lights and stuff are running off the 800, what else is in there running?
Holy shit. It is 277/480 and 3000 amps. What does this place do? I think you talked about when you made the move but I don't remember.
Ah! Injection molding need lots of power for heating extruders and hydraulics.
We're actually a thermoforming plant but some of our other plants are injection mold plants. We are probably going to start that here in the next 18-24 months because our customers want to have the ability to pull from locations nationwide, but I am not looking forward to mixing product when that occurs. The plant that I moved from in WA is going that way sooner because of the recyclability issues and legislation they are up against.
But yes, our extruders suck power at an incredible rate and all of our formers have some pretty massive ovens as well. Not to mention the 4 massive compressors that we have to have available (we're more pneumatic than hydraulic here) and the other heating/cooling systems and it gets crazy. I have had to authorize some monthly electricity invoices for well over $300K, and back at my 'home' plant I never saw an invoice over $40K for electricity.
Are Y'all vacuum forming?
I've done my fair share if so.
Most hard plastics processing requires electrical heating of some type. I was in Expanded Polystyrene for 30 years. We were able to use steam for heating which is more efficient cost wise if you use gas or oil fired boilers. Southern Cal has had high electricity costs for a long time. You won't believe what I pay between 5:00 and 8:000 pm on weekdays, 75 cents/kwh. And California is banning all gas appliances for residences.
The breaker says it’s 240 3 phase. If you check the line to line wires with a meter you should read close to that. The stand alone wire is ground. Not an expert in electric heaters but aren’t they single phase? That may explain the monster ground leads.
Thermoforming uses some vacuum, but it's not like the typical vacuum forming that a lot of people think of.
Here's an example of a mold for a tray that holds pears for packing in 40# boxes. The pin holes you see go back and forth between a slight vacuum and then air eject. The pear tray is a pretty extreme example, though.
Pit Row
Cool, I get it.
Those are a "common". Yes they go to ground, bUT it isnt concidered a ground.
Not every 3 ph ccircuit uses the 5 conductor, bUT some do.
What ever it is rrunning is big.
I'd open the breaker and see what happens. BUT I am a bit of a redneck.
Love no labels!
I don’t have much to add to this discussion other than if this is not the main service of the building and is a sub panel of some sort the neutral should not be bonded to ground. This creates all kinds of potential issues.
This was the original main panel for 1/2 of the building and is still fed by the padmount somehow. The wire striped in white is the neutral which, in a main panel with a disconnect, should be bonded. Only subs are kept separate. As to the other comment about the breaker being rated 240, that is common. As far as i know, they do not have 208 volt breakers, 480 volt breakers are generally rated for 600 volts. Also, 240 3 phase, is not available in this area. I will check the leg to leg voltage tomorrow since you mentioned it though. 120 volts is the square root of the leg to leg voltage of 208. This is a wye connection. It's the same thing that APLMAN has except his is 277/480. 277 is the square root of the leg to leg voltage of 480. 277 is a common voltage for commercial lighting. Some HVAC system also use 277. I will get to the bottom of this tomorrow.
If I'm not making sense right now, it's because I have been playing golf today with the guy that owns the building. We drink beer when we play golf.
Nuff said.
I thought that was a prerequisite.
Freakin' Bobby.... 🤣
We were drinking beer and a round of golf broke out.
Are you running 277 because you have a lot of foriegn built machines?
TM
I don't even know what the 277 means......!
I stay out of the way of the electricians and engineers and just try to get the money for what they say we need!
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