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Bad "Buss Duct" Causes Week-long Closure of 5,000 Employee Federal Complex
McGruber (1417641) writes In Atlanta, an electrical problem in a "Buss Duct" has caused the Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center to be closed for at least a week. 5,000 federal employees work at the center. While many might view this as another example of The Infrastructure Crisis in the USA, it might actually be another example of mismanagement at the complex's landlord, the General Service Administration (GSA). Probably no one wants to go to work in an Atlanta July without a working A/C.
A large metal grid used to transmit lots of power within a building. It is a raceway for bus bars. They help dissipate more heat than using cables and can be tied onto at many points. This isn't a sign of a larger failing - it's a critical part of the building's systems that needed repair. It's not easy to repair while live.
We had a small fire when ours (in a NYC skyscraper) was accidentally shorted. It shut our building down for a couple of days as well (as the bus carried most of the larger loads like HVAC and elevators). We did still have lights and such.
No. Bus ducts are installed because of their high current and extremely low maintenance requirements.
Most bus duct systems I've worked on are on 10-20 year inspection regimes, and I have yet to encounter one, even some which are 50+ years old that actually needed maintenance. They are, or at least should be, sealed systems without so much as a spec of dust to cause problems.