Remote switching equipment arrived on-site within 13 hours to get a distributor warehouse back online the next day.

Power outages are never a good thing, but when it’s mid-July in California an outage that impacts air conditioning will stop you in your tracks. On the morning of July 17, a large online distributor’s warehouse experienced a tripped feeder breaker that left half of its roof-top HVAC equipment offline. Operations came to a halt.

The main breaker had to be re-closed to reenergize the facility, but the operation could not be done manually due to the high-incident energy rating of the equipment. To safely return to service while minimizing downtime, the facility manager turned to CBS ArcSafe.

photo of an RSA-120E installed
The RSA-120E was installed on the switchgear to remotely operate the circuit breaker from a safe distance.

ArcSafe received the call at 11a.m. on Sunday, July 17, and within minutes had a team on the way to work on a remote switching solution. The facility would need a full charge/close/trip system to restore service. ArcSafe employees Cody Lewis and Ben Walterscheid dove into building and testing an RSA-120E remote switch actuator and an RSO-IIID remote switch operator and then packaged them for transport.

By 2:30 p.m. that afternoon, ArcSafe’s Christian Hackney was preparing to fly to California with the equipment. After overcoming a few flight delays, Christian was able to deliver the devices to the facility at 1:30 a.m.

The RSA-120E was installed on the switchgear to remotely operate the circuit breaker from a safe distance. Because the device is held in place by strong magnets, no equipment modifications were required. To operate the RSA, the system relied on the RSO-IIID, a rechargeable 24 V DC power supply us. With the help of ArcSafe’s Kyle Fincher, who provided technical support and information on gear operations to the team working on-site, the facility was back online by the next morning.

If you have equipment with high-incident energy ratings, remote racking and switching solutions are the safest way to maintain and repair your systems. To learn more about our solutions, contact CBS ArcSafe today!