Kern County has the most demanding electrical environments in the Central Valley. Oil and gas production, one of the largest renewable generation concentrations in the country, and industrial agriculture all put equipment under conditions that make accurate arc flash analysis worth doing properly.
Kern County facilities
- Oil and gas production, gathering and processing facilities
- Wind and solar generation and the substations and collection systems that serve them
- Battery energy storage installations
- Agricultural processing — carrots, citrus, almonds, pistachios, grapes
- Cold storage and packing operations
- Manufacturing and distribution across Bakersfield, Delano, Shafter, Wasco, Taft and Tehachapi
Generation on site changes the analysis
More Kern County facilities have on-site generation than anywhere else in the region — cogeneration, standby generators, utility-scale and behind-the-meter solar, and increasingly battery storage. Each contributes to fault current, and each creates operating configurations that have to be modeled separately.
A study that only models the utility-source configuration understates the hazard in every other mode of operation. Where your facility can run islanded, paralleled, or on a tie, each of those scenarios needs its own incident energy result.
Classified areas
Where a facility has hazardous (classified) locations, electrical safe work practices and PPE selection interact with area classification. That requires the study and the electrical safety program to be read together, not filed separately.
What every study includes
- Short circuit study with equipment rating evaluation
- Protective device coordination with time current curves for every panel
- Incident energy analysis and arc flash boundaries
- Labels meeting NFPA 70E and NEC 110.16, printed and installed
- Report sealed by a California licensed Professional Engineer
Three things to check before you hire anyone
Ask whether a licensed P.E. Electrical Engineer seals the final report. Ask whether every panel appears in the coordination study time current curve plots, or only the main gear. And ask who performs the field data collection — missing conductor lengths and unrecorded breaker settings go straight into the incident energy result.
We send a P.E. Electrical Engineer to collect the data, with an electrician as support to open panel covers. The engineer who has to defend the model gathers its inputs.
Talk to the engineer who does the work
No sales team. You speak directly with a California licensed Professional Engineer about your equipment, your schedule, and what the study will actually cost.