Circuit Coordination – Why care?

8 DECEMBER,2021 | By Ramon Folch and Michael Jeckel

Maximizing the beam operation performance is our main objective. Reliable systems and experienced operators are essential, but not always sufficient. It is also important to limit the perturbations caused by unexpected power cuts. The Experimental Areas are especially subject to such events due to their versatile configuration and the lack of circuit documentation for many decades.

In 2021 a few thousands of critical systems with their power sources have been identified in NA, AD, EA. To make this effort sustainable and to get timely notified of planned network power cuts by EN/EL, the equipment owner can simply register the data in field “Powered by” in InforEAM.

CASE STUDY

In the framework of the North Area Consolidation Project some 730 cables with a total length of about 70 km have been identified as obsolete in EHN1, both from the technical galleries and the surface areas is a full-scale practice exercise for the Circuit Coordination. Since not all 90 concerned systems can be powered off (hazard detection, alarms), the precise identification of the end-users is of first importance for obvious safety reasons. The Circuit Coordination has been key.

Those cables were used by Access Control, Gas Detection, RP-ARCON, Emergency Stops, Vacuum, Power Converters, and the INTERCOM system. Due to the upgrade of the different systems those cables have become obsolete and should be removed during the Year End Technical Stop 2021-2022.

For memory, EHN1 was built in 1977, the surface is 15 000 m²