Special edition: Electrical Software

Nowadays, to make the design of an electrical installation, all electrical engineers are using some kind of tools or software. It has become a must to have and use such tools in order to be more efficient, and also to optimize electrical installations.

 These tools can be very elaborate software enabling the complete design and calculation of the electrical installation (power load calculation, selection and coordination of devices, sizing of cable or busway, voltage drop …).

Or they can be simple calculation tools (typically MS EXCEL speadsheets) to make a quick and limited calculation, like the voltage drop of one single branch circuit, the calculation of capacitor bank required for Power factor improvement …

These electrical software and tools can be proposed by electrical equipment manufacturers (device manufacturers, lighting/luminaires manufacturers, cable or busway manufacturers, enclosure manufacturers …), by independent software vendors who sell their own electrical software solutions (electrical calculation, electrical schematics), or they can be simple or more elaborate Excel tools developed by electrical engineers themselves, for their own usage in most cases, but also sometimes shared with others.

In parallel, some new trends, like BIM (Building Information Modelling) might radically change the way to design a complete Building by sharing 3D views and shared databases for all disciplines (architectural, structural, HVAC, electrical, security …), which impacts (or will impact) the way to design the electrical installations.

This is why we decided to dedicate this newsletter to this topic, electrical software, and highlight all that we have already achieved and keep developing around this topic inside our community.

More than 40 electrical calculation tools already shared between members !

One year before, we started to propose our community members to share their own electrical calculation tools with other members, on a dedicated page of our community web area.

And we are really proud of the result, as we have today more than 40 tools which have been shared by some of you. These tools range from simple calculations (Capacitor bank sizing …) up to complete electrical installation dimensioning!

On the right, you can see an overview of this sharing page, which contains all the links to access the tools which have already been shared by members of the community. The first 2 letters correspond to the language of the tool (EN=English, PT=Portuguese, ID=Indonesian …). Click here to go to this page.

To access these tools, a specific username and password are required. They will be requested when you click to download a tool.

The sharing rule is simple: to obtain the access codes, you have to share first at least one of your own electrical calculation tool. Only members who provided a tool to share with others can access all the other tools shared in this area.

To share your tool with the other members (and get access), send your tools to us by mail as an attachment, with a short description to explain the aim of the tool. We will add your tool on the sharing page and send you the access codes (as soon as we can, depending on our availability).

As we now have many tools, we need to add a short description of each tool, to make it easier to find a specific tool. To make this work another collaborative result of the community, we propose you to help us in 2 ways:

> if you have shared one of these tools:
please send us a short description of this tool by mail and we will add it on the sharing page (don’t forget to indicate the name of the tool you describe). If you also want your username (or name) to appear as the Author of the tool, tell us at the same time.

> if you want to get access but you don’t have any own tool to share
We offer another collaborative option: we send you a selection of 5 of these tools, and you send us back a description in English of what these tools are doing. After we receive these descriptions, you will receive the access codes to all the other tools. OK to go? Click here to send us a mail.

Finally, you can also comment about these tools and this sharing area in this dedicated forum topic

More than 70 comments to a blog post about simple calculation tools available on the web!

Written by an electrical engineer (Christian Petrov) this article has brought a lot of reactions with more than 70 comments, which highlights the high level of interest in this topic.

You can read this article here: Software for electrical installation and add your own comments, for example to share the links to other useful electrical tools available on the web.

Another good sharing practice for our community!

A comparison between 4 commonly used Electrical Calculation Software!

Some time ago, we published a comparison between 4 electrical calculation software used for the design and calculation of electrical installation. This comparison was based on our own experience (sometimes limited) in using the software.

This comparison includes the 4 following electrical calculation software:

  • XLpro2 Calcul software from Legrand 1.3
  • Simaris Design 5.0 from Siemens
  • MyEcodial L 3.4 from Schneider Electric
  • Caneco BT 5.3 from ALPI (software editor)

    • Among the 500 members who contributed to our debate inside our Newsletter n°16, 60% are using one of these 4 software, 10% are using another software, and 30% are using a tool they have developed themselves (refer to the upper part related to shared tools between members, it started after this debate!).

    It would be useful for our community to complete and update this comparison, so feel free to share with us and other members the new functions of the 4 software described, or the new software which we should include in this comparison.

    Send your complements to this comparison as a comment to the blog article or if you prefer just tell us by mail.

    Miscellaneous

    You can also take a look at the other articles published in the Electrical Software category.

    If you didn’t try it yet, you might also check our PowerFacAging calculator to estimate how the ageing of capacitors is impacting the expected cost savings of your Power Factor correction installation. You might be as surprised as 40% of the users who already tried it ...


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