Electrical Design Bootcamp - LV Power Calculations

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- September 23, 2019 - Captions in English (EDITED, not auto-generated).

Dear Student,

I welcome you to my tutorial about low voltage power calculations using Simaris Design and Simaris Curves from Siemens.

Planning of an automation project and the electrical wiring on that project starts with power calculations. This is one of the first steps I take when I start to work on a new automation system - I plan and dimension my low voltage power system.

I've tried years ago different software from all the biggest manufacturers and concluded that Simaris Design is, according to my experience, by far the best one out there to quickly setup a project, create single line diagrams and output all the possible documents that one needs when performing power calculations (project documentation, different list in Excel, e.g. busbar, cable, device settings, selectivity documentation etc., single line diagrams in PDF and i DWG/DXF).

Language support is great, meaning that you can set your workspace and the single line diagram to the language of your choice. The same goes for the output documentation.

When creating single line diagrams in Simaris Design the devices you use are grouped into three categories:

· System infeed: (transformer with primary and secondary side, transformer only with secondary side, coupling to use when you have also emergency power supply, like a diesel aggregate (generator) etc.)

· Distribution boards: (with busbars, without busbar, sub-distribution boards etc.)

· Final circuits: (electrical consumers) ranging from general devices,  motors (including DOL, softstarter, reverse-duty and frequency converter), power outlets up to special dummy loads. You even have a possibility to insert a charging unit for electric cars. Talking about awesomeness :)

I definitely highly recommend this software to all of you who work in the electrical engineering field. Even if you don't enroll in my course, I recommend that you invest some time to get to know this program. It's worth it.

I've been using Simaris for years now on many different project across industries and it has always served me well.

One of the last project where I had to do some serious dimensioning of my protection devices and cables was a one from the refrigeration industry.

We had about 715 A of current consumption in our cabinet. Total of 3 power enclosures and 1 PLC enclosure.

In one of the cabinets I had to design a power distribution system for two softstarters to power two screw compressors. One of them 160kW and the other 132 kW. Not to mention that in the area where we had to install our cabinets and pull all the cables the temperature goes up to 38 °C in summer. So I had to be very careful when dimensioning the cables. And we did it! We commissioned the system this summer in July and everything went in perfect order (talking about the worst case scenario - summertime).

Simaris Design has been a great companion during the dimensioning and in general electrical design on this project.

I hope you will enjoy working your way through my course on Simaris Design and I hope you will learn a lot.

Don't forget to have fun on the way!

Your Instructor for Electrical Design,

Ivan