Retrofit of Power Centers Within an Airport

The sun never sets on modern major airports, and in 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week business, extended outages, planned or unplanned, are extremely difficult to facilitate. Extended outages that shut down a major airport are the makings of front page newspaper articles. When the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport decided to upgrade their electrical infrastructure, extensive studies were undertaken to determine the most reliable and cost effective power system available. The focus of this paper is to review the decisions concerning maintenance and the construction retrofit of one element in an airport's power distribution system, which is the power center. This paper will benefit maintenance directors, designers, and others who are wishing to construct, in a remodel environment, with minimal impact to ongoing operations.