Case Study: Blue Oak Energy improves PV arc flash safety with ETAP

Blue Oak Energy cuts arc flash incident energy to ~5.7 cal/cm² with ETAP

Blue Oak Energy, a solar photovoltaic system design and engineering firm, faced significant challenges in performing arc flash analysis for a large-scale PV integration project. Their issues included managing complex PV inverter behavior, handling non-linear arcing currents, selecting a valid AC arc flash methodology for 34.5 kV systems (which is outside the IEEE 1584-2018 voltage limits), and performing DC arc flash calculations at 1500 VDC. They engaged ETAP to address these challenges using its Arc Flash Analysis software and ETAP Digital Twin for system modeling.

ETAP provided a comprehensive solution by accurately modeling inverter auto-trip characteristics, which drastically reduced incident energy. The vendor's tools enabled rapid mitigation evaluation and the correct selection of the EPRI Arc Fault Method for high-voltage calculations, yielding realistic results. This effort reduced incident energy from initial values exceeding 40 cal/cm² down to approximately 5.7 cal/cm² in maintenance mode. ETAP's analysis also identified that increasing the working distance to ~36 inches brought incident energy below the 40 cal/cm² threshold, ensuring worker safety and delivering reliable results across all project locations.

Blue Oak Energy