MV and LV architecture selection guide for buildings

When designing medium and large buildings, the choice of electrical distribution architecture has a decisive impact on the installation performance throughout its lifecycle.

This chapter explains the main electrical and environmental characteristics to take into account, proposes some guidelines and recommendations on architecture selection, and some assessment criteria to compare different architectures. It also explains how to minimize the power losses with the barycenter methodology, as explained in the standard IEC 60364-8-1 "Low voltage electrical installations - Energy Efficiency"

Chapter D - Contents

• Stakes of architecture design
• Simplified architecture design process
  • The architecture design
  • The whole process
• Electrical installation characteristics
• Technological characteristics
• Architecture assessment criteria
• Choice of architecture fundamentals
  • Connection to the utility network
  • Internal MV circuits
  • Number and localisation of MV/LV transformer substations
  • Number of MV/LV transformers
  • MV back-up generator
• Choice of architecture details
  • LV distribution - centralized or distributed layout
  • Presence of LV back-up generators
  • Presence of an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)
  • Configuration of LV circuits
• Choice of equipment
• Recommendations for architecture optimization
• Glossary
• Example: electrical installation in a printworks

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The guide outlines innovative solutions from Schneider Electric™ covering the four main areas of Power Availability and Reliability:

• Digital and power systems reference designs
• How selectivity enhances uptime
• Electrical asset management
• Fault localization, root cause analysis, and power recovery

Download the guide (.pdf)