Case Study: SELECTY achieves safer, better-coordinated protection for an industrial plant expansion with ETAP

SELECTY reduces 10 cal/cm² arc-flash risk to 6 cal/cm² with ETAP

The customer, SELECTY, an Italian engineering consulting firm specializing in power system studies, was tasked with designing a protective device coordination scheme for a European glass manufacturer's industrial plant expansion. Their challenge was to integrate new equipment with the existing brownfield system, verify upstream protection coordination, and mitigate arc-flash incident energy at a critical bus to below 8 cal/cm². SELECTY used ETAP's multi-purpose analysis platform to build a unified digital twin of the electrical system.

Using ETAP, SELECTY built a detailed digital twin to perform short-circuit, motor acceleration, and arc-flash studies. The solution leveraged ETAP's auto-evaluation and rule book to optimize relay settings, which successfully reduced arc-flash incident energy at the critical 10 kV bus from about 10 cal/cm² to 6 cal/cm². This achieved the customer's safety goal and ensured full coordination between the new and existing protection devices, all while providing a traceable, documented validation for the client.

SELECTY