Electrical Solutions for Government

What government and county installations demand of a low-voltage system

The public estate in Kenya is electrically diverse. Ministry headquarters and county offices are lighting, small power and air conditioning loads with a flat weekday profile. Public hospitals and health centres add theatre, imaging and sterilising equipment that must not lose supply. Water and sewerage works are dominated by motors that draw six to eight times full-load current when started direct on line. Schools, training colleges and administration blocks sit somewhere between. One standard board design cannot serve all of them, so distribution should be planned site by site rather than repeated unchanged across a programme.

Nearly all of these sites take a KPLC supply at low voltage. That supply feeds a main distribution board, which feeds sub-main boards on each floor or in each block, which in turn feed final distribution boards serving lighting, socket and plant circuits. Getting that split right at design stage decides how easily the building can be extended later, how quickly a fault can be isolated, and how much of the site goes dark when one circuit trips.

Keeping essential public services on supply

Standby generators are close to universal on Kenyan public buildings, but a generator only protects the load if the changeover is properly engineered. A transfer panel has to detect loss of the utility supply, start and prove the set, transfer the load and hand it back when KPLC is stable again, without ever paralleling the two sources. Where an operator is present around the clock, a manual transfer arrangement may be enough; on unmanned pumping stations or remote health facilities, automatic transfer is the only sensible choice.

The low-voltage assemblies most often specified on public sector projects include:

• Main and sub-main distribution boards sized around the incoming KPLC supply, with spare ways left for future departments or blocks
• ATS and MTS transfer panels to move essential loads between the utility supply and a standby generator
• Motor control centres and motor starter panels for borehole, booster and sewage pumps at water and sanitation works
• Feeder pillar panels for street lighting, compound security lighting and external distribution
• APFC power-factor panels where an institution is billed on a commercial tariff and is paying power factor penalties
• Meter boards and protection panels where consumption has to be apportioned between departments or sub-tenants of a public building

Certification, standards and procurement scrutiny

Public procurement is documented and audited, so a panel has to be defensible on paper as well as sound in the field. Specifying assemblies built to IEC 61439-1 and IEC 61439-2 gives an evaluation committee an objective basis for comparing bids instead of falling back on the lowest figure. KEBS certification on components and the use of EPRA-licensed contractors for the installation work complete the compliance picture, and both are worth writing into the tender document rather than assuming.

Panel Tech Systems builds to IEC 61439-1 and IEC 61439-2 and holds ISO 9001, assembling panels around switchgear from Schneider Electric, ABB, Siemens and Control Techniques. Component-level documentation from that kind of supply chain is usually the first thing an auditor or consulting engineer asks to see.

Delivering panels to sites across Kenya and the region

Very little of the public estate sits in Nairobi. Boards destined for a county water scheme, a rural health centre or a border facility have to survive road transport, arrive complete and be commissioned by people who understand the design. Panel Tech Systems manufactures in Nairobi and dispatches field teams from there for installation and commissioning across Kenya and into Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and South Sudan.

Cost on this kind of work depends on the incoming supply rating, the number and rating of outgoing ways, the form of separation, the switchgear brand specified and whether transfer or power-factor equipment is included, so pricing follows a load schedule and a single-line diagram rather than a catalogue. Send the drawings and a quotation can be prepared against them.