Bonding and grounding. 2

[Mugsiensedgwick]

We have an issue with our Spectralink and I am now thinking it has something to do with power.
Whenever we get lightning in the area one shelf (or both shelves) go stupid on me.
It has also fried boards and power supplies.
Originally we were thinking it was a grounding issue so we added what we hoped to be isolated grounding.
That didn't do any good so we called in a bona fide electrician to help us and he suggested heavier guage wire and deeper ground rod which we did.
That didn't help either.
I was thinking we might not have enough of a power cusion so we ordered a beefier power supply (10 Amp). By the way these were half the price of those cheap Spectralink power supplies and very much better quality.
That seems to reduce the problem but still has not solved the problem.
I had the UPS guy come over and he says the Lieberts hardly ever allow spikes to go through the UPS with the exception being, the grounding side. So I'm back to that.
I know that grounding is an issue that is very specialized for electricians and most of those guys only have a little knowledge of all that is involved and I'm no rocket scientist in that field for sure, but I'm thinking my UPS ground may be wrong.
We run from our buss to the the cabinet of each piece of equipment.
We have the ground coming from the power panel to the UPS and I think I need to change that. I think it needs to go to my isolated buss bar and then from the isolated buss bar to the power panel.
We have our Avaya switch being served out of the same UPS and it has never exhibited any of the problems.
One other thing, there is a smaller power panel between the UPS and the Spectralink which we have run to the buss bar, and I'm thinking this ground needs to be removed when we change the ground to the UPS.
This is a long thread, and I sure thank you for your help.

 

[fireeater]

you could use panamax/towermax surge protectors they have power and set protectors to work as secondary protection for strikes

they can be setup to totally isolate the system and sets from the lightning

HALLOWED ARE THE ORI

mike

http://www.ics-on.ca

 

[NECPBXtech30]

My first question would be; is everything tied to the Building ground electrode? Electricity will always follow the path of least resistance. If you are using a separate ground point than the rest of the building there is the posibbility of a differnce in potential. This means that if the ohms of resistance are higher on the building grounding electrode than they are on the ground point you are using, all spikes will flow to the ground with the least amount of resistance. Get an electrician to check the ohms on your busbar and equipment cabinets.

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results." Sir Winston Churchill

 

[donb01]

Well... there's another possibility lurking here. I have a Spectralink Link 3000 system and am basing my answers on that....

First of all I assume you're running your 110V power into a power supply which is dropping it to the correct voltage for the cabinet(s). This is like an AC Adapter - you can spike the 110V side but it doesn't always have a dramatic impact on the low voltage side unless it's a huge spike, and you're behind a UPS so I have trouble with that. Those kids of power supplies typically isolate the ground as well.

While It's not impossible to have potential on a ground buss, it also seems off that if that was the case there would not be may other systems affected as well.

I am wondering where your base stations are. It is FAR more likely that you are having stray voltage on your signal lines to the base stations, ESPECIALLY if they are in different buildings and you were naughty and don't have the proper protectors in place.

Any time wiring goes from one building to another, be it phone wire, data wire, or any other kind of wire, and whether it be above ground or below ground you should have protection on both sides of the cable. The obvious thought here is for the lightning, etc, but the less obvious case is that you have 2 different buildings with 2 different sources of power - there can be an imbalance between the buildings and power will flow on any path it can find between those 2 buildings in an attempt to balance that discrepancy.

Case in point, I realize the Spectralink base station wiring is completely self contained, but back in the olden days I set up a unix server with an accounting and inventory application at a large local greenhouse. The server was in the main building and has the traditional multiport serial board on it. 200 feet away on the other side of the greenhouse we had a dumb terminal for shipping and receiving, etc. Everything worked fine, but we were blowing out terminals on average every 2 - 3 months. What we found out was that the server was plugged in at the main building - traditional 3-prong grounded plug, and the terminal was plugged in way back in the greenhouse, which had it's own service - same deal, traditional 3 prong grounded plug. Well, in both cases that ground pin is connected to the case of the device, among other things. And on a serial cable connection, Pin 1 is a frame ground that is also connected to the case of the device. There was a difference in potential between the electric service in the office building and the greenhouse building which was actually causing power to flow on that ground wire! Eventually after a while of this it managed to fry a chip or two and it was time for a new terminal.

So let's assume your cables don't run directly to your SL base stations, and you happen to visit several closets along the way there. Each one of those cross-connects offers a new way to introduce weirdness into those signal lines.

I would go into portcard configuration or display and take a look at the stats for the base stations. if you see one that's taking lots of errors, relading a lot, etc, either disconnect it, or find a point in its wiring where you can cut the wire, put a 66 block in there and then install sneak current protectors/fuses across each line.

Maybe that will help!