—
ABB Technical Tuesday Webinar Series

We asked, you answered and now we’d like to share your thoughts on the state of the industry during these unusual times.

Lisa Bagwell, ABB’s Director of Field Application Engineering for the US, will share key findings, trends and highlights of this year’s Electrical Design and Power Systems survey.

Conducted in September 2021 with Consulting Specifying Engineer readers, the study provides insights on changes in demand for project types, products and technologies. We’ll also provide a 2022 business outlook.

The rapid growth of fleet electrification is driving new and emerging charging technologies that serve the high demand needs of commercial and transit fleet sites.

This session will examine an innovative range of charging systems designed for electric fleet vehicles, and will explore site considerations for choosing the right mix of charging technology.

Attendees will hear from experienced EV industry leaders who've supported numerous transit and commercial fleet projects throughout North America.

When planning for EV chargers, you’ll also need the right electrical equipment to safely connect them to the grid and manage energy use.

This webinar will help attendees understand the considerations for designing grid-to-charger electrical distribution systems, including fleet design, charger type, power levels, client requirements, energy storage concerns, and smart charging capabilities.

Attendees will hear experienced guidance for planning a grid-to-charger infrastructure project or program and learn how future-proofing can meet growing EV demands over time.

Considerations when faced with the need for an arc-flash risk assessment, and you realize an arc flash study was never completed for a location.

This session will explore the advantages and disadvantages of several options. Including in many cases, an exact incident energy number may not be needed. All you may really need to know is if the PPE that is on hand offers the protection you need to complete the task safely.

Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs) are becoming more normal in modern electrical design to replace older electro-mechanical technologies. The implementation can be defined as electronic microprocessor-based devices like trip units, motor management overloads, protection relays, tap changers, various device controllers, etc. These devices are utilized in circuit breakers, mounted in various types of switchgear, integral or controlling transformer circuits and many other protection and control uses.

Moving to electronic devices in the specification and design of electrical systems enables many benefits to the owner, installer and maintenance personnel. Many of these devices contain or have options for human machine interfaces, remote operation displays, improved start-up and diagnostics modes, data logging, alarming and much more. For new designs this is almost a must today as the prices for electronic devices are very competitive with the previous technology and will avoid future shut down and retrofits required to upgrade to enable the vast features.In this session we will go through some specific examples and best practices.

In this session we will recap part 1 for Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs)and discuss how these are utilized and optimized within an entire electrical system.

Intelligent Electronic Devices may contain human machine interfaces, remote operation displays, improved start-up and diagnostics modes, data logging, alarming and much more which enables owners to improve asset management, optimize installation and improve enhance overall maintenance and operations.

These intelligent devices enable electrical power management and control systems, building management, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), the ability to perform asset performance management and even remote maintenance. A properly design system will consist of layers of protection, control and monitoring. Think of this as a pyramid where the control functions are embedded within the IEDs at the bottom of the pyramid. The middle section is the control layer that coordinates across many IEDs and the top layer offers overall monitoring of the system with or without the direct ability to control certain protection devices at the bottom of the pyramid. This monitoring layer can typically be done at the local electrical room, the control room on premises or even in some cases for remote operations hosted in a cloud protected server.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most critical pieces of the smart building puzzle. Without it, a building can barely be described as smart – it enables so much of what building owners and managers rely on to create the safest and most comfortable experiences for their occupants every day.

A building platform should, first and foremost, gather data from the building management system and other smart technologies, to gather data from disparate sources. Then, it should feed this data into a flexible, scalable cloud-based platform that stores it securely and standardizes the data.  

But that still does not make a smart building. Using a platform with built-in AI is where the real innovation happens. These technologies enable integration and enhanced intelligence across a building or estate – improving building operation for its occupants, from modelling building and equipment performance to factoring building system data and external input like weather or traffic. In turn, this allows for machine learning to continuously optimize spaces within a building to reduce energy spending and waste.

We are in the age of IoT digital connectivity, driving change and innovation towards smarter and more efficient secure buildings. Smart building systems and solutions are now accessible for control through your smart device from anywhere at anytime.

Our intelligent emergency lighting systems can provide building owners with a safe and reliable solution, enabling lower cost maintenance and simplifying mandated testing requirements to reduce emergency lighting systems overall operating costs.

The evolution of battery energy storage systems (BESS) is now pushing higher DC voltages in utility scale applications.

Industry experts are forecasting phenomenal growth in the industry with annual estimate projections of 1.2 BUSD in 2020 to 4.3 BUSD in 2025.

With this tremendous market expansion, the industry is continually looking for ways to increase system efficiency and durability. It is key that system designers are aware of these trends in order to design system components that meet current trends.

Review the evolution of battery energy storage from 12vdc to today’s 1500vdc installed in large scale utility systems.

Global megatrends are shifting towards decarbonization, de-centralization and digitalization. 

These exciting trends are leading to increases in renewable generation, new loads from electric vehicles and an array of distributed assets along the distribution grid. 

In order to support these trends, energy storage solutions (ESS) will be a critical component with in the grid of the future.

Alexandra Goodson, ABB’s Global Product Manager for ESS, will review how an ESS is designed and ESS applications supporting today’s global megatrends.