Making My Paper Mill Safer: An Arc-Flash Energy Reduction Story

A Midwestern pulp and paper mill had arc-flash ratings around 100 cal/cm² on 50 480-V unit substations. New relays were installed to replace the existing protection and add light detection to improve arc-flash detection times. During a couple of one-day outages, sample installations took place. During the cold mill outage, 44 installations were completed over 12 days by working around the clock. Old relays were removed, new plates were mounted and wired in, and fiber sensors were routed through the buswork and into the breaker cubicles. Updated arc-flash studies show an average arc-flash rating reduction of 90%.