Siemens ensures safe electrical installation at the new Bauhaus Museum Dessau
November 1, 2019
The new Bauhaus Museum Dessau (Germany) opened its doors in September 2019, featuring technology from Siemens Smart Infrastructure to help keep visitors and its extensive collection safe. A comprehensive solution for safe electrical installations extends throughout the museum’s 5,500 square meter footprint, which includes over 1,000 exhibits from the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation’s collection. The latter comprises 49,000 objects, making it the second-largest Bauhaus collection worldwide. It contains numerous student works and teaching documentation, as well as drafts and prototypes from the workshops of the renowned art academy, which celebrates its 100 th anniversary this year.
Siemens Smart Infrastructure’s installation includes 17 Alpha distribution boards equipped with residual current protective devices (RCCBs) and miniature circuit breakers (MCBs), plus a total of 257 arc fault detection devices (AFDDs) from its Sentron portfolio. The protection devices prevent electrical accidents and fires, keeping the extremely valuable exhibits at Bauhaus Museum Dessau from harm.
“Insufficiently protected electrical systems can have devastating effects – also, and above all, in museums housing irreplaceable artefacts. To be on the safe side, we implemented an integrated solution from Siemens with the very latest protection devices,” said Frank Assmann, head of the construction department of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation.
This protection concept from Siemens includes devices to prevent electrical accidents, system downtimes and power outages, as well as arc fault detection devices. Unlike RCCBs and MCBs, AFDDs detect not only parallel but also serial arcing faults. Serial arcing faults are one of the most common causes of electrical fires. These can occur due to damaged cable insulation, crushed cabling, bent connectors or loose contacts in the electrical installation. The result is rapid overheating, which can ultimately spark a cable fire and consequently lead to a fire in the building. Arc fault detection devices significantly increase the safety of people and assets. Based on Siemens’ patented SIARC detection technology, the devices continuously measure the high frequency noise of voltage and current for their intensity and duration and the gaps between them. An integrated micro controller analyzes these signals and triggers the disconnection of the connected circuit within fractions of a second if anything unusual is detected.
The technical implementation of the electrical installation solution at the new Bauhaus Museum Dessau was handled by Elektro Schulze GmbH Dessau, and Schaltanlagenbau Förderstedt GmbH Güsten, Germany.
