Case Study #4: Knoxville, TN

One of the largest commercial nurseries in the world relies on a combination of gas-fired and electric boilers to heat it greenhouses. A series of unexplained failures in multiple electric boilers left both the end-user and the manufacturer of the boilers puzzled.

Our investigation identified that the neat and iso-phased routing of the multiple phase taps in close proximity to the steel enclosure was causing excessive heating due to induction. The heating was severe enough to eventually damage the insulation of the wire and cause a major arcing fault in the tap wires.

Once the root cause was identified, we specified the replacement of a section of the enclosure with non-magnetic material. There were no more failures due to that cause.