The project electrical engineer should have design responsibility for the starter for every motor that is to be supplied for a particular installation.
That may be a controversial statement to make since present practice, in England, is for the mechanical equipment suppliers to supply complete system packages including the starters all under control of the mechanical or heating and ventilating engineers. This is still permissible if system package suppliers are made to use the standardised starter designs and specifications described within this article which will permit full integration with the electrical system. It would make little difference to the system package suppliers as they invariably sub-contract out the electrical component of the system package.
There are of course benefits to having complete system packages, it means that the supplier of an item of equipment is totally responsible for that equipment. This relieves the heating, ventilating, refrigeration and mechanical engineers from any real engineering tasks allowing them to become contract supervisors instead of design engineers, which simplifies their life as it is likely that they were never properly trained in engineering design at either college or university. The overall effect of this is to change their job description from engineer to highly paid chillaxing pen pusher.
There are also disadvantages in that control of the package is lost, both operational and financial, each package usually comes with a maintenance contract which has to be entered into as the controls are via a programmable logic controller where the program is either not available or where it is available undecipherable. The quality of the electrical components of these packages is questionable as they are almost always built to a price with little or no regard to quality.
There is a generator supplier who charges £20k, yes twenty thousand pounds sterling, for the program to access and modify the generator parameters that are held within the engine management computer the alternative is to have a maintenance contract with that generator supplier. There is another generator supplier, who is no longer trading, who admitted using inferior electrical system components in his equipment to ensure a constant supply of work for his maintenance department.
If every package supplier supplies their own starters there is no commonality of components, which affects spares stockholding this has cost implications; and the BMS/SCADA system normally has to be a retrofit once the starters are on site. This always leads to additional non budgeted costs and delays the project as design takes place after the package is installed.
It is also doubtful whether the package supplier has been given or has requested the electrical supply parameters to ensure the equipment is of adequate strength (Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 regulation 5) or that the starting method is the most economic whilst preventing excessive volt drop at the point of common coupling.
Have you ever heard of the package supplier stating the protection coordination type number?
The calculations and type test certificates to prove these points are rarely supplied as are rating plates on their MCCs and discovering the equipment incompatible with the electrical system once it is on site will have major cost implications and program delays as well as raising serious safety issues.