IEC Standards

If the facility has a problem with fire inside panels then a number of possibilities come to mind:

• The facility has a serious and immediate process materials containment problem, that the electrical panel is expressing and the health of the personnel maybe isn't expressing yet. The business will be suffering financially with the process material containment issue regardless of the fire and may be exposing itself to claims in the future on health and safety grounds.
• The electrical panel is not wired to current practices, such as the current edition of British Standard 7671, or whatever equivalent is applicable at the location of the installation.
• The electrical panel is wrongly-sited relative to the extent of the hazardous area prevailing, and the combination of potentially explosive process materials and non-hazardous electrical equipment in contact with each other is causing fires.
• The ingress protection rating of the panel is not consistent with the process materials containment problem regardless of the hazardous area implications.
• Some combination of the above.

Intrinsic safety is a concept whereby the electrical circuit passing into the hazardous area is incapable of creating an explosion due to the limitations of voltage and current on that particular circuit. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_equipment_in_hazardous_areas for more reading on this and the other hazardous area electrical protection techniques.

Please be advised that the selection, installation, commissioning and maintenance of hazardous area electrical equipment is something for specially-trained persons. Others should really leave it alone until appropriate training has been completed.