Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Voltage is not right Buck or Boost it ?

 One of the big problems when it comes to preventing problems with machinery which has electric motors  in buildings with 3 phase power is making sure the machine is wired for the correct voltage. There are 2 basic 3 phase systems in use in many commercial buildings today . 3-phase 3 wire systems which provide 230 volts phase to phase  Delta configuration which does not have a neutral wire  and more standard a 3 phase 4 wire system Y configuration  which is 208 volts  phase to phase  and 120 vac phase to neutral. So. You go out and order a new machine have it installed on the 3 phase and 5 weeks later the machine has died. OK what has happened well it turns out the service is providing 208 volts but the motor is wired specifically for 230 volts which meant the motor did not have enough power and burned it self up . Now what you can not get a 208 motor you need to fit. This is where a Buck or Boost transformer comes into play. In the above scenario a boost transformer will take the 208 volts and make it 230 volts . Which you can see in pictures at left is being done in an office buildings mechanical room for a dentists suction pump system.  But if you have a 208 motor and need it to run on 230 volts so it will not burn up then you need a Buck transformer which will take voltage from 230 to 208 vac . Motors burning up particularly in summer time is always a problem when wrong motors are specified. now with some foresight you can order a motor which can be run on 208 or 230 volts
 and the a buck or boost transformer is not needed but all too often a motor burns up before some one realizes the wrong motor has been ordered. This happened to one of my institutional customers who kept blowing up swimming pool motors and people who installed them where installing the wrong voltage motors. The idiot company kept insisting I was wrong and after it happened a 3rd time the local power company engineer came on site and told them I was correct there 230 volt motors would not run on the 208 services.Needless to say the swimming pool service company had to eat the cost of 3 bad motors due to there own ignorance of electrical systems. Plus all the labor cost.
But had they actually been trained individuals instead of some wannabe electricians then they would not have suffered this embarrassment .same old story people are too dam lazy to get properly trained and some one pays and some times people get hurt or die. but that's just the way it is  in life. particularly in Pa. since we have no state electrical license.

No comments:

Post a Comment