Arcing fault current, incident energy and arc flash boundary - a whitepaper

The 2018 update to the IEEE Std. 1584 Guide for Performing Arc Flash Hazard Calculations has introduced new electrode configurations that can drastically affect incident energy calculations and labeling. The electrode configurations discussed in this paper are: Vertical conductors/electrodes inside a metal box/enclosure (VCB), Vertical conductors/electrodes terminated in an insulating barrier inside a metal box/enclosure (VCBB) and Horizontal conductors/electrodes inside a metal box/enclosure (HCB).  

This paper will discuss arcing fault current, incident energy, and arc flash boundary results for each enclosed electrode configuration that challenge the assumption that HCB will always yield the worst-case incident energy and arc flash boundary.