All Webcasts

ENERGY STAR for Engineers: New and Existing Buildings

In this Webcast, learn how ENERGY STAR is being used by engineers and owners for new and existing buildings, and how to use the Energy Star Portfolio Manager software for benchmarking and tracking building energy performance...  more >>

IBC Seismic and Wind Load Compliance For Non-Structural Components

Understanding provisions in the latest edition of the International Building Code (IBC) is critical when specifying electrical generating systems that will continue to operate during and after events such as an earthquake or hurricane...  more >>

The Magnificent Seven: Top Tips from Top Designers

Seven designers of mission critical systems will each present one "gem" of a design tip in this special 90-minute Webcast.  more >>

Specifying Total Light Management

This Webcast will review several light management strategies--occupancy sensing, daylight harvesting, light leveling tuning, demand response and automated shading--that not only save energy in buildings but also improve comfort and productivity of the people inside them.  more >>

Next Generation Motor Starters: How to Increase Reliability and Performance

Motor starter technology has changed dramatically over the last few years. This webinar will explain the trends of the industry, show how new generation motor control systems can benefit your business, and review the UL508E standard.  more >>

Fire Suppression Systems and Climate Change: What Engineers Need to Know Now

Whatever your beliefs are regarding global climate change, national and international legislative initiatives could impact the design and specification of fire suppression systems.

This 1-hour Webcast will present an overview of clean agents with emphasis on environmental considerations, especially pending or potential climate change regulation.

Uptime All the Time, No Matter What

This webcast covers the Uptime Institute's tiers for data center availability, ASHRAE's guidelines for data center cooling, the PUE metric, modular rollouts, and tradeoffs for reliability and efficiency. To take the CEU exam, click here.  more >>

Product Certification and Safety Standards: What You Need to Know

How products are certified safe for the U.S. electrical infrastructure may be changing...and that could affect you and your job. Learn what you need to know about ensuring electrical product safety from three experts representing organizations that know the most about this important issue.

Take the CEU exam, click here.

Standby Power Systems for Hospitals: The Debate: Is Paralleling Generators a Good Idea?

Standby Power Systems for Hospitals: The Debate: Is Paralleling Generators a Good Idea?

Take CEU exam by clicking here.

The primary goal of an emergency power system for a hospital is the reliability of the power source of adequate capacity to serve the Priority 1, 2, and 3 loads. In the event of a failure of one of the generators, the priority 1 and 2 loads should be powered (as a minimum). There are two ways to achieve this reliability and capacity:

A) Provide a paralleling, emergency system with N+1 generators such that the N generators will serve the entire load without exceeding 80% of their individual unit rating.
OR
B) Provide a system of generators and transfer switches so that the each generator serves a dedicated load (that does not exceed 80% of any unit rating) and the load of any generator can be transferred to another generator or generators to maintain power reliability.

For the paralleling system the pros are:
Traditional system configuration, true N+1 configuration, and the cons are: higher cost, large space requirements, and single-point-failure mode in the paralleling cabinet.

For the multiple generator system the pros are:
Smaller footprint, reduced cost, no single point failure modes, and the cons are: the configuration requires that two transfer switches be placed in series at some point in the system.

Which is the better approach?

Designing a LEED Silver Certified, State-of-the-Art Data Center

Become an insider on Emerson's soon-to-open 35,000-square-foot, energy optimized data center project. Emerson Network Power evangelizes best practices in data centers, and when it was called on by corporate parent Emerson to help design and equip a showcase data center that would accommodate the company's 100-facility consolidation project, Emerson Network Power got the chance to practice what it preaches...