- #1
Derill03
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Hello I am an electrical engineer freshly out of school and i was wondering if anyone could help me reach an answer to this design problem. I am attempting this problem solely for personal knowledge because in school I never took a course on distribution design. I found this problem looking around on google but honestly did not find much more information that seemed relevant. Any help would be appreciated.
You are sent to investigate an incident where someone received a shock from a construction pedestal in
a nearby new underground residential construction area. The area is served at 12.47/7.2 kV primary
underground. The location you are asked to look at has a 50 kVA padmount transformer supplying a
hand hole that has three - three connector bus bars. The transformer is a standard 120/240 low side
center tapped (grounded) connection.
Given:
There is only a temporary metered construction pedestal connected to the hand hole and has three
outlets (GFCI protected) to allow for both 120 volt and 240 volt hand tools and construction power to
the residential home being built there. Two outlets are 120 volts and one is 240 volts. The pedestal has
an installed 5/8” x 8’ ground rod (copper weld) to ground the metal pedestal enclosure.
The shock happened when the person touched the open metal lid on the pedestal after switching the
hand tool plug locations. An offhand comment by someone noted that in using hand tools on the job
site, one outlet seemed to make the tools run much faster.
To Do:
1. Clearly show the electrical connection diagram of what you think happened at the pedestal to
provide the voltage needed for an electric shock? Please draw on a separate piece of paper.
2. What voltage to ground would be present?
3. If the electrical resistivity of the soil at a nearby substation location was measured at 50 ohm-
meters what is the calculated ground rod resistance at the pedestal?
You are sent to investigate an incident where someone received a shock from a construction pedestal in
a nearby new underground residential construction area. The area is served at 12.47/7.2 kV primary
underground. The location you are asked to look at has a 50 kVA padmount transformer supplying a
hand hole that has three - three connector bus bars. The transformer is a standard 120/240 low side
center tapped (grounded) connection.
Given:
There is only a temporary metered construction pedestal connected to the hand hole and has three
outlets (GFCI protected) to allow for both 120 volt and 240 volt hand tools and construction power to
the residential home being built there. Two outlets are 120 volts and one is 240 volts. The pedestal has
an installed 5/8” x 8’ ground rod (copper weld) to ground the metal pedestal enclosure.
The shock happened when the person touched the open metal lid on the pedestal after switching the
hand tool plug locations. An offhand comment by someone noted that in using hand tools on the job
site, one outlet seemed to make the tools run much faster.
To Do:
1. Clearly show the electrical connection diagram of what you think happened at the pedestal to
provide the voltage needed for an electric shock? Please draw on a separate piece of paper.
2. What voltage to ground would be present?
3. If the electrical resistivity of the soil at a nearby substation location was measured at 50 ohm-
meters what is the calculated ground rod resistance at the pedestal?