Understanding Manufacturer Supplemental Grounding Requirements

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April 4, 2019

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April 4, 2019

Understanding Manufacturer Supplemental Grounding Requirements

Grounding electrical currents is crucial for safety. Without properly grounding electronic equipment, a power surge could cause an electrical fire and seriously injure anyone standing nearby. The primary purposes of grounding include people’s safety, equipment protection, and electrical noise reduction, all of which grounding achieves through voltage stabilization for circuit conductors.

To properly ground electrical currents and ensure safe operation of electronic equipment, you need to fully understand all the manufacturer supplemental grounding requirements. Here are the essentials you need to know.

Main Components for Constructing a Grounding System

The primary manufacturer supplemental grounding requirements for building a grounding system include the following components:

Earthing, or grounding, electrodes, which consist of ground rods or plates interconnected by grounding cables and bonded to grounding conductors.
Surge protecting devices (SPDs), which ensure the safe operation of grounding electrodes.
Main earthing terminals or bars (these are especially important for server room floors, or any other electronics floors where there’s frequent electricity).
Grounding conductors, which divert the ground noise from the communications circuit and shield, thus providing the necessary safety.
Supplementary equipotential bonding conductors, which prevent dangerous voltages between protective earth and metallic systems.
A lightning protection system (LPS), which reduces the risk of equipment damage from lightning and other causes of power surges, thus also ensuring personnel safety.

When installed properly, all these components ensure proper equipment and enclosure grounding, and provide a low-impedance path for ground-fault current, effectively limiting fault voltage to a safe level.

Grounding Networked Workstations

Networked workstations that use modems, or are connected to servers, also must be properly grounded. They require an application of supplemental grounding conductor network, which must be connected to all the workstation’s items and its branch circuits.

Grounding electronics floors, such as server room floors, or any other area where there’s sensitive electronic and computerized equipment, is also vital for people’s safety and the safe operation of equipment. It prevents static, or body voltage generation, so the right flooring for effective static control is paramount.

The best options for data center floors are static dissipative carpet tile, vinyl tile, epoxy flooring, and rubber tile and sheet flooring. However, these should be combined with a proper grounding system for an extra layer of safety.

If you’re in need of reliable electrical services, MSC Electrical is here for you. We offer both commercial and industrial electrical services, all of which are done by enforcing a strict safety protocol.

Our number one driving force is our clients’ safety, so you can be sure that every electrical service you require will be done properly and securely. We also guarantee efficiency, without compromising quality in any way.