Evolution of electrical design practice in office buildings

Angelo Baggini, Franco Bua, Francesco Buratti

This paper summarises the outcomes of a European survey, aiming to evaluate typical office building electrical installation design practices in the years 2000 and 2005 in terms of adoption of Power Quality solutions.

A global installation model was built on a feeding model obtained by national market researchers on office buildings based on the Delphi approach. Interview results have been processed in order to define adoption frequencies of design issues solution covering the whole building electrical design.

The outcome of the survey showed a design practice modification in the examined period, which can be summarised as an increase in: reserve and emergency supply adoption, double radial scheme adoption, derating factor adoption for transformers, reactors and motors, high efficiency motors usage, neutral conductor oversizing, power monitoring equipments installation, plugs number and a TRMS approach for cable sizing.