Power System Studies: Essential for Industrial and Commercial Operations
A client had the report. Guidant Power had already flagged the coordination gap and handed over the recommendations. Nobody acted on it. Months later, a fault hit the system, and it took down more than it should have. When the root cause team went back through the file, the answer was already sitting there, unopened for months.
A study doesn't protect you. Acting on what it tells you does.
The cost of downtime is well documented across every industry we work in, and it consistently outweighs the cost of a study. The patterns that cause it repeat constantly:
A fault trips the wrong breaker and takes down a whole line instead of just the circuit that failed
New equipment causes nuisance tripping or drags voltage down across the plant
An arc flash label describes a system that no longer exists
A power system study puts these failures in front of an engineer before they show up as lost production. What happened to our client above is what happens when the study gets done and then sits in a drawer.
What a power system study actually does
It's a model of your electrical system. Engineers take your one-line diagrams, equipment ratings, protective device settings, and utility data, then simulate how the system behaves under normal load and under fault.
What comes back is specific:
How much energy a fault would release at a given panel
Which device trips first
Whether your gear can survive the current it may someday see
The core analyses
Short circuit analysis tells you the fault current available at each point in the system, so you know if your breakers, switchgear, and panels can actually handle it.
Coordination studies confirm your protective devices open in the right order. The device closest to the fault should clear it, not the main feeding the whole facility. This is exactly what failed in the incident above.
Arc flash analysis gives you incident energy at each piece of equipment. That drives the labels and PPE your people rely on.
Load flow analysis confirms the system carries its loads at acceptable voltages, and sets a baseline for planning changes.
Load studies are often requested to help facilities evaluate capacity, plan expansions, and assess operating configurations needed for maintenance.
Two studies get underestimated until they're done:
Plant electrical drawings are required by NFPA 70B. Once clients have them, they realize how much easier maintenance and troubleshooting gets.
Grounding studies. Insurance companies push for these more now, because an ungrounded system puts people at direct risk.
Depending on the facility, you may also need a motor starting study, harmonics and power factor studies under IEEE standards, or hazardous area classification if you handle flammable chemicals or combustible dust.
Compliance and the five-year clock
A study is a snapshot. It shows your system the day it was modeled. Add a transformer, change a setting, switch utility sources, and the results drift from reality. Nobody notices until it matters.
NFPA guidance says refresh studies every five years. Clients find out they're behind in one of three ways:
Internal audits, where the outdated study surfaces on its own
Insurance audits, where inspectors may identify missing labels, outdated analyses, or a lack of documented periodic review.
OSHA compliance audits, which have prompted more than one client to call us directly
When studies and reports are built for audits from day one, compliance stops being a scramble.
What to look for in a provider
The study's only as good as the engineer and the data behind it:
Licensure where your facilities actually are
Experience in your facility type, since a refinery, a data center, and a hospital fail differently
A direct connection between the study and field work like infrared inspections
Deliverables that hold up under NEC, NFPA, OSHA, and insurer review
Guidant Power's engineering work comes from Morrow Engineering, a Guidant Power company. Over 40 years of experience, 7,000-plus studies completed. Licensed across the US and Canada, working to NEC, NFPA 70E, NFPA 70B, OSHA, IEEE, and ANSI standards, tied directly into Guidant's arc flash and infrared thermography teams.
Start with what you don't know
If your last study predates your last expansion, or you can't say when it was done, start there. The study costs far less than an unplanned outage or a safety incident, and it's the only way to know what your system will do before it has to.
The client in the opening story eventually got their system fixed. It just took an incident to make it happen. Don't wait for yours.
Talk to a Guidant Power engineer, or learn more about our electrical engineering services.
