Tailored Arc Fault De­tec­tion for stu­dent Ac­com­mod­a­tion

Red Queen, Tile Hill | Pre-configured Hybrid AFDD Consumer Unit

Our re­cently launched Pre-configured Hybrid AFDD consumer unit has been spe­ci­fied on a ma­jor new stu­dent ac­com­mod­a­tion con­struc­tion pro­ject near War­wick Uni­versity. The 210-bed­room com­mer­cial de­vel­op­ment is due for com­ple­tion in late sum­mer 2020 and the main elec­trical con­tractor for the pro­ject is So­li­hull-based, Or­ange Elec­trical Con­tract­ors.

With on­go­ing safety of oc­cu­pants a primary con­cern for the ac­com­mod­a­tion de­ve­lopers and con­tractor, our AFDD hy­brid dis­tri­bu­tion board solu­tion has been se­lec­ted to re­duce the risk of fire res­ult­ing from faults, by en­sur­ing the AFDD trips the af­fec­ted cir­cuit.Com­ply­ing with BS EN 62606, the AFDD, when com­bined with our dis­tri­bu­tion sys­tems, provides a hy­brid solu­tion which has been rig­or­ously tested and val­id­ated to of­fer op­timum pro­tec­tion against the harm­ful ef­fects of dan­ger­ous elec­tric arcs.

As part of the elec­trical pro­tec­tion sys­tem, 28 com­mer­cial pre-configured hybrid AFDD consumer units have been in­stalled, as Tom Kennedy, dir­ec­tor at Or­ange Elec­trical Con­tract­ors ex­plains: “The in­tro­duc­tion of the 18th Edi­tion of BS 7671 has fur­ther in­creased and im­proved safety stand­ards to provide ad­di­tional pro­tec­tion against fire on both do­mestic and com­mer­cial pro­jects, in­clud­ing stu­dent ac­com­mod­a­tion.  As such, the abil­ity to fit our AFDD hy­brid consumer unit brings sev­eral be­ne­fits. The boards are both aes­thet­ic­ally ap­peal­ing and in­cred­ibly ro­bust, so not only do they look good, but they also meet the spe­cific re­quire­ments of its in­stall­a­tion en­vir­on­ment.”

As part of the pro­ject, our En­gin­eered Solu­tions team worked closely with the de­ve­lopers to cre­ate the tailored solu­tion which ex­ceeded the unique re­quire­ments of the pro­ject. As a res­ult, we were able to de­liver 28 pre-con­figured hy­brid consumer units hous­ing stand­ard in­com­ing and out­go­ing devices. Ar­riv­ing on-site fully ter­min­ated, the en­gin­eers had the straight­for­ward task of simple con­nec­tion and in­stall­a­tion, sav­ing on time by elim­in­at­ing the need for col­lat­ing boards, in­comers, and devices on-site.

“By us­ing a tailored solu­tion from Hager, the Pre-configured Hybrid AFDD consumer unit of­fers plenty of space and ac­cess­ib­il­ity so that our en­gin­eers can work com­fort­ably and at ease.  On a large-scale com­mer­cial pro­ject like this, in­stall­a­tion speed is also of the es­sence and can be the dif­fer­ence in en­abling us to stay on track with con­struc­tion dead­lines. The pre-as­sembled nature of the Hager hy­brid dis­tri­bu­tion board has made a real dif­fer­ence to us.”