Load Capacity and Load Balancing For Commercial Buildings
As someone responsible for commercial or industrial infrastructure, you’re expected to keep operations running while managing risk, cost, and compliance. That includes ensuring your building’s electrical systems can handle demand.
Balancing load capacity ensures power reliability, prevents downtime, and extends the life of your equipment. When these systems are optimized, uptime and energy efficiency improve.
Learn what load balancing is, why it’s crucial, the signs of imbalance, and how to maintain optimal loads below.
What Is an Electric Load?
An electric load is any device or system that draws electrical power from a power source. Examples include heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems, lighting, heavy machinery, and automated systems.
Electrical loads are distributed through switchgear, a distribution board, or an EQ load center panel. This equipment organizes and manages electrical circuits safely and efficiently.
Types of Electric Loads
Electric loads fall into three categories:
Resistive loads: These loads convert electrical energy into heat. They include electric heaters, incandescent lighting, and ovens or toasters in break rooms. Resistive loads draw a consistent current.
Inductive loads: Inductive loads include motors, pumps, fans, elevators, and anything that uses a magnetic field to operate. These systems cause lagging power factors, which can produce inefficiencies or strain electrical systems if not accounted for in load planning.
Capacitive loads: Capacitive loads typically appear in industrial settings or in power factor correction systems. These loads store energy in electric fields and oppose changes in voltage.
What Is Electrical Load Balancing?
Electrical load balancing involves dispersing electrical demand across phases of a building’s power system to maintain system stability, prevent outages, and protect equipment.
Most commercial facilities operate on a three-phase electrical system. When one phase carries more demand than the others, the system becomes unbalanced. This imbalance can cause:
Reliability: When power is distributed evenly across all phases, the electrical system operates more predictably. This reduces circuit overloads, equipment trips, and system downtime. Disruptions can lead to costly delays, safety risks, or product loss. A balanced system helps prevent these scenarios by maintaining stable voltage and current.
Energy efficiency: Unbalanced systems often draw more current than necessary. This extra current translates into wasted energy and higher utility bills. Load imbalances also reduce the effectiveness of power factor correction strategies, further impacting energy costs. When loads are balanced, the electrical infrastructure runs closer to its optimal design parameters. Transformers operate efficiently, conductors carry current evenly, and a building’s energy profile becomes stable.
Equipment lifespan: When one phase consistently carries more load, switchgear, breakers, and conductors experience uneven wear. This can lead to premature failure or unplanned maintenance. Balanced systems extend the lifespan of electrical assets. Motors run cooler, panels experience less heat stress, and emergency systems perform reliably during transition. This translates into lower replacement costs and predictable maintenance budgets.
Safety: Overheating circuits, tripping breakers, and voltage swings increase the potential for fires, arc faults, or unexpected shutdowns. By distributing load evenly, building owners can reduce thermal stress and mechanical fatigue on wiring and components. This results in safer electrical systems for personnel, maintenance crews, and facility occupants.
Regulatory compliance: Electrical codes and utility regulations often require system balance within specific thresholds. Facilities that don’t meet these standards may face penalties, utility surcharges, or be required to retrofit systems to comply. Managing load balance supports compliance with electrical standards.
Symptoms of an Unbalanced Electrical Panel
Unbalanced electrical panels might not fail outright, but they leave behind clues. Below are the most common warning signs of an imbalance:
Flickering or dimming lights: When lights flicker, dim, or behave erratically, it typically indicates voltage instability, which can affect lighting circuits more noticeably than others. While sometimes dismissed as a minor annoyance, this symptom often points to a systemic issue.
Frequently tripping circuit breakers: Circuit breakers are designed to trip when a circuit becomes overloaded, but if tripping becomes frequent or localized to specific panels or phases, it may signal uneven load distribution. Part of the system may be carrying more demand than it should, triggering the breaker even when the entire system’s capacity appears sufficient. Ignoring this can lead to equipment failure or electrical fires.
Unusually high electricity bills: If your facility is drawing more current to compensate for inefficiencies caused by imbalance, your energy bills may reflect it. Commercial electrical systems operating under unbalanced conditions have lower power factor efficiency and greater line losses. If overall usage hasn’t changed, a sudden increase in energy costs may be due to a load distribution issue.
Damage to sensitive equipment: Unstable voltage caused by unstable load can degrade or damage sensitive electronics and systems. This can cause performance degradation, memory loss, or unexpected shutdowns, resulting in increased maintenance and early replacement costs.
Strange noise: Humming, buzzing, or rattling can indicate overloaded components. These symptoms may go unnoticed in busy environments, but they’re signs of phase overload or transformer strain. Such issues may precede equipment failure or insulation breakdown.
How to Balance Electrical Loads
Building a smart and responsive infrastructure can help companies maintain their power demands. Here are four ways to balance electrical loads.
1. Use Power Generation Systems
Backup and standby power systems manage load during outages or peak demand. These systems can handle substantial electrical loads while distributing power evenly across multiple phases.
Diesel and gas-powered generators offer reliable, fuel-efficient performance for long-duration backup or prime power needs. Mobile generator units support flexible deployment for temporary load sharing, field operations, or infrastructure upgrades.
Integrated controls within these systems help maintain load balance during switching, startup, and shutdown sequences.
2. Integrate an Automatic Transfer Switch (ATS)
An ATS transfers load between the utility and generator power. It includes advanced logic to help distribute load across phases and prevent overload during transitions. The switch can:
Sense phase imbalance and respond in real time.
Support circuit breaker coordination.
Reduce electrical stress on infrastructure during transitions.
3. Manage and Test Loads
Managing electrical loads entails understanding how those loads behave under actual conditions. Load bank testing simulates electrical demand to confirm system stability and performance. It detects imbalance, assesses capacity, and verifies generator performance under load.
Parallel switchgear allows multiple power units to work together. These systems balance loads across generation sources, increasing flexibility and improving fault tolerance.
4. Explore Remote Monitoring
Remote asset monitoring solutions provide customized visibility into load distribution, phase usage, and voltage stability. These solutions can:
Offer continuous monitoring of electrical loads from any location.
Detect early warning signs of imbalance.
Enable predictive maintenance and long-term energy planning.
Build Reliable Commercial Building Power Systems With Thompson Power Systems
When you manage electrical infrastructure for a commercial building or an industrial facility, you need a partner who understands power systems. At Thompson Power Systems, we help you design and maintain electrical infrastructure. Our solutions support power generation, load testing and balancing, remote monitoring, and preventive maintenance.
We’ve spent over 65 years serving businesses across Alabama and northwest Florida. Our team can help you improve reliability, reduce energy waste, and protect your facility’s value. Contact us today to learn more.
