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Emergency Lighting
Former Community Member
Is it a requirement for High Voltage Switchrooms and internal Substations to be equipped with Emergency Task/Emergency Escape Lighting or does this represent a fire hazard in this environment?
Larger or more complex substations and switchrooms that I have seen DO have emergency lighting. Provision of same greatly simplifies fault finding, alterations and repairs, and facilitates escape if it all goes horribly wrong.
I fail to see that properly installed emergency lighting would be a fire risk. Standard self contained battery operated emergency lights are often the cheapest and easiest to install. A better quality solution IMHO is a small central battery system but with the output switched by the same control as the room lighting. This avoids the needless discharging of the battery during a prolonged external power failure.
Larger substations often have significant battery capacity anyway (for the protection relays, recharge motor mechs, SCADA etc) - emergency lighting is often supplied via these batteries as it presents a fairly small proportion of the standing load on the batteries
Larger or more complex substations and switchrooms that I have seen DO have emergency lighting. Provision of same greatly simplifies fault finding, alterations and repairs, and facilitates escape if it all goes horribly wrong.
I fail to see that properly installed emergency lighting would be a fire risk. Standard self contained battery operated emergency lights are often the cheapest and easiest to install. A better quality solution IMHO is a small central battery system but with the output switched by the same control as the room lighting. This avoids the needless discharging of the battery during a prolonged external power failure.
Larger substations often have significant battery capacity anyway (for the protection relays, recharge motor mechs, SCADA etc) - emergency lighting is often supplied via these batteries as it presents a fairly small proportion of the standing load on the batteries
