OVERVIEW
Panelboards range from the 208/120V Panelboard in your house to a 125VDC distribution board for switchgear power.
OOTB SPEL doesn't have provision for Panelboard's as far as reports or schematics go.
Generally, Panelboards will have a number of Circuits on them and each Circuit will be connected to a Phase BUS.
For example with a 4-wire 42 Circuit, 208/120V Panelboards each Circuit will have a connection to one phase (A,B or C). Single Pole Circuit Breakers will provide 120V from a particular phase to Neutral and 2-pole breakers across two circuits will provide 208V phase to phase.
SOLUTION
Create a new PDB.
Give it a Voltage Rating of 208 V so that you can filter on it later
(I added a custom integer property in Data Dictionary called NumberOfCKTS so I could filter out 42 and 30 circuit panels)
Create a new BUS
Create an Incomer circuit for the panel feed (call it whatever you want)
Create a feeder circuit and call it '1' -> change its 'Sequence in Group' property to be 101
Create a circuit breaker under the circuit you just created -> add in the 'Current Rating' property and the 'Number of Poles' property
Now duplicate the circuit you made above ( the CB gets duplicated as well)
Call the duplicated circuit '2' - > change its 'Sequence in Group' property to be 202
Update the duplicated CB properties if you need to.
Repeat duplicating for as many circuits that you have in your panelboard and if the circuit is odd set the 'Sequence in Group' value to be the circuit number + 100 (example: circuit 5 would be 105) and even circuits would be the circuit number + 200 (example circuit 20 would be 220)
Once you do this once you can always duplicate the whole PDB for another panelboard which is nice.
Once you have added some loads to your panelboard and connected up power cables you need to make a report.
CREATING THE REPORT
Go to Reports->New
When the new report dialog pops up
- leave Source template Blank
- Give the new report a name
- set the Item Type to 'Circuit'
- leave radio button set to 'Tabular format'
- Select 'Add to plant reports' if you want
Click create
When Excel opens up go to the 'Add-Ins' tab
Go to Options
Set 'Skip lines between rows' to '0'
setup header as you want just remember the one after the last row is where you define the database fields I use 5 rows for my headers usually.
Click OK
Next you need to setup a Filter
Highlight Circuit and click Define
Go to Filter Tab in the 'Define Report Item' dialog
Click on the browse button
Create a New Circuit Filter using the 'Match All' selected with the following properties
- Power Distribution Board.Rated Voltage = "208 V"
- Circuit Type = "Feeder"
Click OK and OK to Select the filter (The filter you created will show up in the 'Applied Filter' textbox)
Now, Click on the Properties Tab
Add the following properties for the circuit object:
--> Item Tag
--> Sequence in Group
--> Power Distribution Board.Item Tag
Click OK
In the 'Define Report Contents' dialog click on 'New'
Add the following Related Objects (in bold)
Once a related object has been added (you will see it show up under the circuit) highlight it and click on Define again to add properties for the related objects
(Note: -> denotes a related object and --> denotes a property)
-> Power Distribution Board
--> Description
--> Current Rating
--> Note (I use this for the location)
-> Disconnect Electrical Equipment
--> Item Tag
--> Current Rating
-> ConnectionSide1 Cable
--> ItemTag
--> ConnectionSide2.Plant Item.Item Tag
--> ConnectionSide2.Plant Item.Description
Once all the related objects and their properties have been added you can then add them to your report.
I started mine at row 6 and added descriptions on row 5
So to map a SPEL db property to excel click on a cell and then go up to the 'Map Properties' in the Add-In. Highlight Circuit and you will see sub-menus appear of the related objects and also the Circuit properties as well.
Row 6 Col A |
Circuit-->Power Distribution Panel.Item Tag |
Row 6 Col B |
Circuit-->Item Tag |
Row 6 Col C |
Disconnect Electrical Equipment-->Current Rating |
Row 6 Col D |
Leave Empty |
Row 6 Col E |
Circuit-->Sequence in Group |
Row 6 Col F |
ConnectionSide1 Cable-->Item Tag |
Row 6 Col G |
ConnectionSide1 Cable-->ConnectionSide2.Plant.Item Tag |
Row 6 Col H |
ConnectionSide1 Cable-->ConnectionSide2.Plant Item.Description |
Row 6 Col I |
Disconnect Electrical Equipment-->Item Tag |
Row 6 Col J |
Power Distribution Board-->Description |
Row 6 Col K |
Power Distribution Board-->Current Rating |
Row 6 Col L |
Power Distribution Board-->Note |
One thing to note that although the CB has a 'Number of Poles' property I couldn't get it to map to the report. If anyone can figure this out please let me know.
To get around it I would leave the 'Current Rating' of a CB blank if it was attached to the second circuit in a 2-pole circuit or the third circuit and a 3-pole circuit.
So, for example, say you were using a 208V connection facilitated by a 2-pole CB that used two circuits like Circuits 5 & 7. I would go to the CB attached to Circuit 7 in SPEL and set its 'Current Rating' to nothing.
That way I could use some VBA in the final excel report to see if there was 1 blank in the 'Current Rating' field then it was a 2 pole breaker and if there were 2 blanks then it was a 3-pole breaker.
I know it sounds like a convoluted work-around but it works.
I also ended up breaking each panelboard out into its own spreadsheet and adding some formatting using VBA which is fairly straightforward.
I have attached an excel spreadsheet of what the final report looked like at the bottom of the blog (you will need to login to download).
If anyone is interested I can go through the VBA that I ended up using to make it look this way.