In late 2011, a major
broadcast company had a power outage that dropped live and pre-recorded
television programming for 1½ hours to approximately 1/3 of the United States
during the prime time viewing period. The company lost vital revenue
while electrical and facility engineers tried to determine the source of the
problem and correct it.
Problem
After several failed
attempts to restore the broadcasts, it was discovered that several new pieces
of equipment had been brought online shortly before the outage. The
customer was able to restore broadcasting service by turning on all equipment except
these new additions.
Upon further
investigation, it was discovered that several of the electrical circuits which
carry the load of the broadcast equipment were close to the maximum load
rating. Adding the new equipment to these circuits was enough of a load to
exceed the maximum rating, which tripped the circuit breakers and took down the
entire broadcast system. A review of the remaining facility showed that
many of the electrical circuits were beyond 90% of their capacity.
Solution
The broadcast company
installed three Dranetz Encore Series Branch Circuit Energy Monitoring (BCEM) systems. The system is located in their primary broadcast distribution
center and has 54 Dranetz ES210 DataNode’s. The Dranetz BCEM and ES210’s
will actively monitor the real-time loading and energy consumption across all
of their primary electrical distribution circuits. The BCEM’s were
incorporated into their existing Encore Series Software server for real-time
monitoring, alarming, and historical reporting of the electrical usage and
patterns. In addition, the customers Building Management System (BMS) is simultaneously
reading the BCEM data for redundant, centralized monitoring and alarming by the
24x7 building operational staff.
The Dranetz BCEM System (below) provides the broadcast company easy, centralized monitoring of energy, demand,
power factor and much more from a single monitoring location.
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