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Who Will Read This Book?
The subject matter is of interest to Plant Electrical Engineers, Electrical Power Consultants, Electrical departments of Process Contractors & Consultants, Engineering firms designing and installing electrical power systems, Electric utility T&D engineers dealing with industrial customers, engineers responsible for promulgating US and international standards, Electrical Engineering colleges in their power curriculum, and Technical Training businesses.
The book's initial readers are anticipated to be plant-electrical engineers and consulting engineers responsible for the design, operation, and maintenance of industrial and commercial power systems, who to date had no documented guiding principles for the complete design of, or partial modernization of, large, medium, or small industrial facilities, or commercial buildings that may be operating across the full voltage spectrum of 480 V through 34.5 kV. Utility engineers in distribution departments may gain an in-depth understanding of the rationale of grounding industrial and commercial power systems, with which they maintain a free-wheeling tie or one of a sole power provider. The book pinpoints not only the dots, but also the interconnecting lines that lead these engineers to identify and evaluate the effectiveness, attributes and characteristics of a neutral grounding and ground-fault protection system.
In due course, recognizing that a core-course material is at hand, colleges and technical training institutions may want to extend their course curriculum into the book's subject. Technicians engaged in testing ground-fault protection equipments would benefit from such a course based on selected subjects to meet individual objectives.
Large electrical power-consulting engineers and process contractors would be interested in extending their in-house expertise on ways to design and implement the Book's guidelines. Government agencies (OSHA) and the NFPA may find the book's contents a broad base to build consensus Standards and guidelines.
Not to be overlooked is the potential for the book to create business opportunities for organizing 30-weeks, 3-hours, evening/day courses, where a number of "traveling-engineering instructors" would teach the curriculum on subsequent working days in five pre-selected cities, for 30 weeks in a row. This method was quite popular in the fifties and sixties when a number of such IEEE-IAS sponsored district lectures were so organized. Their cessation was not a lack of interest, but a waning corporate support and interest in training their engineers. Reputably-documented course materials are always essential to assure quality teaching and learning. Such opportunities would also attract interested retired engineers to serve as tutors, on a fee basis. As a substitute, course material could be developed for internet class rooms.
International Orientation
The design concepts presented in this book are those developed in the last 50 years by US engineers, for use with US equipment and machinery, to serve US safety concerns, to meet US production objectives, and based on US protection philosophies. In that time span, the US technology erudition has spread and shown to be equally successful throughout the world where such conditions coalesced. In the current thrust toward globalization, it is essential that these proven and successful philosophies be effectively advanced so as to cause its proliferation into the international engineering community. This book should contribute to the delineation of these philosophies to be expounded, first to, and then by, US representatives in global Standards-making bodies.
Although European equipment and neutral-grounding practices differ, portions of Industrial Power System Grounding Design dealing with common fundamental analyses of systems and their response to ground faults, as well as ground-fault protection philosophies, are almost equally applicable at 60 Hz (in the US and its satellites) as at 50 Hz (in Europe and its satellites). To that extent the book should be useful to the international engineering community.
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