Impact of Electrodes Configuration on Incident Energy Analysis Using IEEE Std 1584

Abstract

The principal injury events associated with electrical hazards are electrical shock and arc flash. Although the first event is more developed in literature, the second is the responsible for most of hospital admissions due to electrical accidents. In the last 30 years, concern about burn injuries caused by arc flash events has increasing, so much so that models to predict the energy from the arc were developed: Lee’s and Doughty-Neal’s models, as well as the IEEE Std 1584, are the most famous methods to predict incident energy. In this paper, it is proposed the estimation of incident energy of a 11 kV bus using the equations from IEEE Std 1584 for two different electrode configurations, then the comparison between results in terms of incident energy, arc-flash boundary and PPE categories.