Grounding Consultants

Grounding Consultant Services by General Type of Business

Investigations, Healthcare, IS, MIS, Telecommunications, Cellular, PCS, Industrial Processes, What will we do for YOU?, Power Quality and other issues, Lightning Protection, Grounding System Design, Grounding System Testing,

Investigations as to earth grounding integrity for all types of buildings, systems, electronics issues and facilities. From skyscrapers to fast food restaurant point of sale systems. We find your problems and work with you to get them corrected!
Design / Redesign of your grounding systems to correct problems!
Ground Testing with instruments where necessary such as site surveys.

HealthCare facilities and their special life safety requirements in patient safety and reliable equipment functioning in surgical suites, heart transplant suites, intensive care suites of all varieties. Diagnostic imaging suites with MRI - CT - PET - Lithotripters - Digital Radiography, X-Ray, Telephone and Data Processing Information Systems, Emergency Life Support Systems and Emergency Back-Up Power Systems and of course support to Bio-Medical engineering departments. Mobile CT and MRI Vans and their special associated problems.

- And yes, we have discovered instances where patient deaths could probably have been avoided by proper attention to patient safety in those areas. We published a paper in 1990, and sent to all hospitals we could find listed in the central mid-west, outlining areas of risk to help other facilities avoid those mistakes.
  HealthCare facilities and their systems probably present the most difficult technical challenge to investigate and recommend corrections. This is because of patient safety and signals in the Micro-volt to Kilovolt region and their proximity to one another and the broad range of equipment and diverse technological developments and their integration into one place together.
  
  This arena once constituted almost 40% of our client base with one client being a small Caribbean country. Worldwide we have assisted Seimens, Philips, G. E. Medical and many HealthCare Institutions with resolving their problems.
  
  Having been a regional systems engineer for G. E. Medical Systems for many years, we ferreted out many problems in Medical Institutions and developed new approaches to providing more reliable systems environments. It pays off on the Bottom Line too!

IS, MIS, Telecommunications Systems, LAN'S, WAN'S, Satellite Links, and other critical systems are all dependent on "quiet grounding" - free of harmonics - protected from Lightning, etc. - absent of multiple grounding points to provide reliable operation. We can perform TDR on LAN and WAN to find problems, recommend ways of avoiding lightning damage and outages with protective systems, techniques, and design.

- Having helped in the debugging of new and advanced grounding techniques for the first very large scale Univac systems at Bell Lab's, AT&T (43 systems for the yellow pages), Western Union, New York State Tax & Finance, Army's War Games Center, AIR FRANCE worldwide reservation system. Also, French National Railroad - (control's all the trains in France), Sperry Marine, and many others - we began early to understanding the effects that poor grounding and environment can have on systems reliability.
  Logic ground, Analog ground, Earth ground, Safety ground, Conduit ground, Isolated ground, Relay Rack ground, Multi-Building grounding, Ground Loops are all common terms that come into play with sophisticated computer system grounding design and layout.
  
  We have helped resolve problems for clients in Banking, Financial Institutions, Air Line Reservations companies, Businesses, and Stock and Commodities Trading Institutions, Etc. worldwide.
  
  We have taught field engineers how to effect better systems reliability and service mainframes and subsystems in the field at the Sperry Univac Education Center in Princeton, N. J. Yes, we know what to look for when you have problems related to your environment and can even rule it out in some case's.

Remote Telecommunications facilities and their associated systems and grounding such as PCS and Cellular site's. Having investigated and made recommendations for lightning damaged sites for telecommunications companies you can see that serious thought must be given to these isolated facilities grounds and power systems in order to prevent outages to critical communications.

- We have an early broad background having studied RF tower grounding design - antenna design - transmission line design, being a "Ham," maintaining radio communications equipment facilities, control tower, transmitter and receiver sites for the Air Force Communications Service (2066^th, AFCS). Yes, we know and can help with these problems making your site more reliable with our recommendations.

Industrial Process Facilities with associated robotics, distributed PLC's, and network's can be easily disrupted. In many cases these facilities have their own dedicated sub-station and are very close to large transient's resulting from lightning and power switching.

- Ground Grid's become a critical path for both safety and an "earth sink" for the effects of lightning discharge. Exposed outside overhead cabling is vulnerable to "inductive pickup" from lightning. Strong induced and direct lightning transient voltages can easily upset, disrupt and damage improperly grounded systems and unprotected power lines.
  We have provided solutions to problems in Steel Production, Aluminum Extrusions, Fiberglass Production, Truck and Car Frame Manufacturing, Liquid Gases, Newspaper Production, Grain Elevators (very explosive environment potential), Paper Manufacture, Railroad Remote Automatic Weighing Systems, and others Etc.

We also work with "heavy power" situations such as power sub-stations and investigate problems in switchgear etc. We prefer not to measure High Voltage lines, but have and carry safety equipment to go up to 20 KV and can if necessary. We normally measure and do most of our investigations under 1000 VAC and less than 5,000 amp circuits - classified as Low Voltage.

What will we do for you?

First we will ask a lot of questions about your problem. If your problem is simple and we can help you on the phone in our "Initial Consultation" then we are both winners. You - because your problem went away and - us - because we are not in the position of billing you for travel and time for a simple solution.

- This is the phase that we can tell you what may be necessary to find and resolve your problem. We prefer "win - win" situations and believe Customer Service is one of our stronger assets so we will attempt to understand the seriousness and complexity of your issues and advise you how to proceed.

Second - should you need our services we will schedule time for traveling to your location to assist you. We will carry a large variety of specialized equipment for evaluating your environment as well as our experiences and specialized skills. During our visit to your facilities we will investigate and record the findings for our report. We carry a portable power line-monitoring instrument and place it into use during our visit. We will lease additional equipment, if necessary, to get more detailed data on more difficult problems using "state of the art" equipment.

- We normally require a knowledgeable person to assist in access to electrical panels, transformers, distribution rooms and that can assist in immediate repairs that can be made to correct serious safety and other issues that may be found. (Ungrounded transformers are a common issue.) This person will be made aware of our findings as we discover them. They will assist in scheduling any downtime for testing, specialized equipment etc.
- We can make a formal presentation of our findings to management before we leave if you wish with a report. We carry video and photographic equipment for remembering and reports and will use them unless requested not to do so.
- We, of course, will be sensitive to your on going operations to avoid disruptions to your business or production.
- We travel "heavy" with a battery powered oscilloscope, computing power for high tech data analyzing and "lab grade" instruments. Also, special software and a number of testing devices of our own design interfacing a computer to analyze grounds, harmonic voltages and currents on lines and grounds for potential problems. Most problems are found and resolved without the extra "horsepower" but we carry it - just in case. (Most people are under the mistaken idea that "a new ground" will solve all their problems - it just isn't true in our experience.)
- While we are there we are covered with general liability insurance and our agent will provide you with a "certificate" if you request one.

After we return to our office a report will be generated unless one was prepared and delivered before leaving and will reflect our findings and recommendations.

- Sometimes additional research and assistance in helping a client is required because of a particular circumstance and we wish to offer the very best solution for the best price. This will enable you to understand that we really mean that CUSTOMER SERVICE is what we sell - along with a few skills…..

E-Mail or call us about your problems!

HTTP://PowerConsultants.com is HOME to one our companion sites and it addresses different environmental, Power Quality and other issues that may affect you. We travel with all that capability also to offer clients a very broad range of solutions to their problems.

We believe our full range of services provides the most cost-effective solution for our clients. In addition we are "True Independent" consultants without outside financial income from anything except service directly applying ourselves to our clients problems only.
One should remember that grounding is not the cause of all problems. However, it is a large source of them.

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