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Carelabs

IEEE 1584 · Engineering

Protect Your Personnel and Equipment With Short Circuit Analysis

Upgrade your protection strategies with insightful data from short-circuit current levels at various points in the system. Carelabs calculates fault current at every point in your system using the ANSI/IEEE C37.010 and IEC 60909 methods, then confirms your fuses and breakers are sized to clear a fault safely.

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What the study establishes

Fault current decides whether your switchgear can interrupt what it may one day be asked to interrupt. Every other protection decision rests on getting that figure right.

What We Deliver

Fault duties at every busbar

Three-phase, line-to-line and line-to-earth fault currents are calculated to IEC 60909 at each bus, including peak, breaking and steady-state components, so each device is checked against the current it would genuinely have to clear.

WHY IT MATTERS

An under-rated breaker does not trip late. It fails.

A device asked to interrupt more fault current than it is rated for can fail to clear at all, leaving the fault to burn until something upstream removes it. Nothing about a healthy installation reveals that condition in advance.

  • Fault level requested from EVN for the actual point of connection rather than inferred from transformer rating, which understates duty on a strong supply.
  • Maximum and minimum source conditions both calculated: maximum governs equipment withstand, minimum governs whether protection picks up at all.
  • Motor contribution above roughly 50 kW included, since large motors feed current into the first cycles of a fault.
  • Devices relying on cascade or back-up protection identified and checked against the manufacturer's tested combination tables.
  • Results feed directly into IEEE 1584 incident energy, so the study is the prerequisite for any credible arc flash assessment.
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DELIVERABLES

What you receive

Issued against TCVN 7447 and IEC 60909, with the assessment basis stated rather than implied.

  1. 1Single line diagram reconciled against the installation as built, not as originally designed
  2. 2Fault current table per bus with three-phase and earth fault duties, peak and breaking values
  3. 3Device duty comparison with explicit pass or fail against nameplate interrupting capacity
  4. 4Uprating, current-limiting and network-splitting options for every device that fails
  5. 5The calibrated ETAP model file, so a future change becomes a re-run rather than a new study
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How the study runs

01

Walk-down and scope

A lead engineer verifies the single line diagram against the installation and records nameplate data from transformers, switchgear and large motors.

02

Source and asset data

EVN fault level is requested for maximum and minimum conditions, alongside transformer test certificates, cable schedules and protection settings.

03

Model build

The network is rebuilt in ETAP from verified data. Where records and the installation disagree, the installation governs and the discrepancy is recorded for your drawing set.

04

Fault calculation

Symmetrical and asymmetrical fault currents are calculated at every bus to IEC 60909, across the switching configurations the site actually runs.

05

Duty comparison

Calculated duties are compared against installed ratings, and every shortfall is quantified rather than simply listed.

06

Report and handover

Findings are ranked by consequence, mitigation is costed, and the model and report are handed over with a walkthrough for your engineering team.

Frequently asked questions

The fault level at your point of connection, given as both a maximum and a minimum figure. Maximum determines whether your switchgear can interrupt the worst case; minimum determines whether protection will pick up at all. A single value is not sufficient, and we can request the letter directly where you prefer.
It usually matters a great deal. Park supplies are reinforced as tenants are added, and a stronger upstream network raises the fault duty your switchgear must interrupt without anything inside your own boundary changing. A study carried out at fit-out may be describing a fault level the park no longer has.
Not for the analysis, which is done offline from data captured on site. An outage is only needed where protection settings must be verified at the relay, or where panels have to be opened to confirm nameplate data that the records do not cover. We scope any outage requirement before mobilising.
It comes first. Incident energy under IEEE 1584 is calculated from bolted fault current and clearing time, both of which come out of the short circuit and protection work. Running an arc flash assessment on assumed fault levels produces labels that look authoritative while potentially understating the hazard.

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