MCC Refurbishment & Upgrades

E&B Industrial Electrical is a Perth-based electrical contractor providing MCC refurbishment and upgrade work for mining and industrial clients. The work runs from replacing obsolete components in an otherwise sound board, through to feeder modifications, protection and control upgrades, testing and documentation.

Motor control centre refurbishment is usually about extending the useful life of equipment that still has good bones. Rather than replacing a complete MCC, targeted work on the sections that have aged or no longer suit the process can return the board to reliable service.

This page covers what that work involves, when refurbishment makes sense, and the issues that typically come up with ageing equipment.

Testing & documentation

Proving the work before it goes back

Refurbishment work is only finished once it has been checked. What that involves depends on the equipment and the agreed scope, and typically includes some combination of:

Electrical testing

Point-to-point wiring checks, insulation resistance testing, continuity testing, and low-resistance or micro-ohm testing of bolted connections where the project requires it. Functional testing confirms the board behaves as intended before it leaves the workshop.

FAT support

Where a project calls for formal Factory Acceptance Testing, E&B can support that process. There is more detail on switchboard and MCC testing and FAT.

Labelling and documentation

Updating labelling, equipment identification and drawing mark-ups so the board that goes back to site matches the paperwork that describes it. On boards modified repeatedly over the years, this is often the single most useful part of the job.

Weighing it up

Refurbish or replace an existing MCC?

Complete replacement is not the only option, and it is not automatically the right one. Whether refurbishment makes sense depends on what is actually in front of you.

Where refurbishment often stacks up

If the enclosure and busbar system are sound, the board is the right size for the duty, and the problems are concentrated in components, wiring or protection, then targeted refurbishment can extend useful life substantially for a fraction of the cost and disruption of replacement. It also avoids the civil, structural and cabling work that a new board can drag along with it.

Where replacement may be the better answer

Where the busbar system is damaged or undersized for current requirements, the enclosure is badly corroded, the arrangement no longer suits the process, or compliance requirements cannot reasonably be met by modifying what is there, replacement may well be the sounder decision. Very old equipment can also reach a point where so much needs changing that refurbishment stops being economic.

How the decision gets made

Honestly, it comes down to inspecting the equipment. Age alone is a poor guide — two boards of the same vintage in different environments can be in completely different condition. An assessment of the enclosure, busbars, connections, components, wiring and documentation, considered alongside the site's operational requirements, is what the decision should rest on.

Ageing equipment

Older and obsolete MCCs

Most of the MCCs in service around WA have been in place for a long time and modified more than once. A few issues come up again and again.

Obsolete components and limited spares

Once a starter, breaker or relay is no longer manufactured, every failure turns into an extended outage while something is found or adapted. Sites often carry the last few spares for critical feeders and hope they last. A planned refurbishment is the opportunity to move those feeders onto current equipment.

Ageing protection equipment

Older protection relays drift, and some can no longer be tested or set reliably. Where protection can no longer be trusted, it is doing less than the drawings suggest.

Deteriorated wiring and past modifications

Heat, vibration and age take their toll on wiring and terminations. Layered modifications from over the years compound it — wiring that does not match the drawings, redundant cores left in place, and changes nobody documented.

Labelling and documentation

When labelling is wrong or missing and drawings are out of date, fault finding becomes slow and isolation becomes risky. This is a safety issue as much as a maintenance one.

Busbars and connections

Bolted connections can loosen or degrade over time, and signs of past overheating at a connection are worth investigating rather than cleaning up and reassembling.

Changed operational requirements

Plant rarely runs the way it was originally designed to. Motors get resized, equipment is added, duties change — and the board is often the last thing brought into line.

Applications

Mining and industrial applications

Motor control centres sit behind most of the motor-driven plant on a site — pumps, conveyors, ventilation fans, crushing and processing equipment, agitators, compressors and materials handling.

That makes them critical in a way that is easy to overlook until something stops. An MCC fault does not just take out a board; it takes out whatever that board feeds, and on a processing circuit or a ventilation system that can mean the operation stops with it.

It is also why MCC refurbishment is usually planned around a shutdown or a period when the affected plant can be taken out of service, rather than being done reactively.