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jim phillips
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It has been said that we only use 10 percent of our brain. Here is some information to
Short Circuit help you fill the other 90 percent.
Short Circuit Motor Contribution
Jim Phillips, P.E.
Short Circuit Motor Contribution
When a short circuit occurs, all connected running motors act
like generators for a few cycles and produce short circuit
current that is fed back into the power system. The motor
contribution can total thousands of amps when all motors are
taken into account.
During a short circuit, the voltage collapses at the point of the
fault (short circuit). As the voltage collapses, the motor’s
field does not instantaneously collapse so there is a rotating
magnetic field and motor windings – exactly what it takes to
produce electricity. Although the motor’s short circuit current
only lasts a few electrical cycles, while the field collapses. It
is during the first few electrical cycles that overcurrent
devices must respond and they must either interrupt or
withstand this additional current.
Motor contribution is equal to locked rotor current. i.e. if a
motor has a full load current of 40 Amps and a starting
current (locked rotor current) of 200 Amps, then the motor
can contribute 200 Amps to the short circuit. When there are
many motors on a power system, as there usually are, you
can see the total motor contribution can be significant.
To calculate motor contribution manually, it is easiest to total
all of the motor contribution and add it to the calculated short
circuit current. Although this is somewhat simplified and
therefore not 100 percent accurate, it is the most straight
forward method. Other considerations would be that motors
are distributed throughout the power system and not lumped
at one bus. In that case, you would want to consider what
motor contribution is at each local bus.
In last months example, we calculated a maximum three
phase short circuit current at the 480 Volt secondary bus of
26,845 Amps. Let’s say there are 20 motors with a short
circuit motor contribution of 200 Amps each. That would be
a total of 20 X 200 Amps or an additional 4000 Amps of short
circuit current. If you add this to 26,845 Amps, the total short
circuit current would be 30,845 Amps. If you were evaluating
equipment rated 30,000 Amps, motor contribution would
make a difference between an adequate equipment
application and an inadequate application.
NEC® Article 110.9 Short Circuit Interrupting Ratings
National Electrical Code® Article 110.9 requires that all
equipment that could interrupt short circuit current in an
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electric power system must have an adequate short circuit
interrupting capability. If an overcurrent device such as a
fuse or circuit breaker was subjected to a short circuit current
beyond its rating, the device could possibly explode leading
to equipment damage and jeopardizing the safety of
personnel. The circuit breaker below has an Ampere
Interrupting Rating (AIC) of 10 kA or 10,000 Amps. This
means the device’s design was tested in accordance with
Underwriter Laboratories test procedures and is capable of
being applied at locations where the short circuit current is
no greater than 10,000 Amps at the device line side
terminals.
It is fairly easy to determine a device’s rating from the
labeling. However, it is often difficult to determine how much
short circuit current would be available at a device if there
was a fault. Hopefully the past several months of example
calculations, formulas and procedures, will help give you a
better understanding of the calculation process. Of course,
the best method for calculating short circuits is to use as
much detailed data as possible and factor in X/R ratios for
more precise numbers. Due to the complexity of the
calculations involved with this level of detail, it is usually
easier to use one of the many available computer programs.
The manual methods will get you close, and in most cases
will be conservative, which is good for estimating short
circuits.
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copyrighted material by Technical Training Group. The
information is for general guidance only and neither
Technical Training Group nor Jim Phillips, P.E makes any
warranty expressed or implied and assumes no liability what
so ever for it’s use. Sorry everyone, too many lawyers out
there.
Copyright © 2005 T2G Technical Training Group
You can contact Jim Phillips, P.E. at: jim@jimphillipspe.com