Cressall cracks accreditation for Saudi order

The accreditation forms part of a project to supply Neutral Earthing Resistors (NER) to be used by the Saudi Electricity Company (SEC), NERs are designed to limit the current that would flow in the event of an earth fault, to reduce damage and improve safety. To comply with the latest SEC requirement that NERs be tested in an approved testing station engineers at the 100 year-old Leicester-based manufacturer sent the equipment and documentation to one of only two approved testing facilities in Europe capable of supplying the 12MW of power needed to conduct such tests. The tests in Milan successfully proved that Cressall NERs could withstand the high energies of such an application, and means that units will shortly be installed in six different substations in Saudi Arabia. Cressall Resistors managing director Cy Wilkinson said: "The particular designs we tested are used extensively for NER applications around the world. We have installed them in The United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and also here in the UK. We expect to receive more enquiries for NERs from the Middle East." he concluded. Due to the relatively rare instance of earth faults, NERs may only be called upon to operate a few times in their service life, which may be 25 years or more.