Overview
Electrical Tools (E-Tools) provides 14 common electrical calculation and data look-up tasks. These tasks include wire sizing, conduit sizing, motor equipment sizing, panel sizing, lighting requirements (in metric or English units), current to power conversion, Ohm's Law calculator, capacitor sizing, voltage drop, short circuit, and the quick look-up of many electrical formulas and conversion factors. Results are instantly displayed on the screen as data is entered. Some of the functions in E-Tools are also covered by other Elite programs. For example, E-Tools will calculate the voltage drop for up to five components with their associated kVA loads. Our V-Drop program will calculate the voltage drop for networks containing up to 2,000 components and kVA loads. The same situation exists with the short circuit and luminaire requirement calculations. Elite has other programs you may want to consider that address those applications on a complete system basis.
Program Input
E-Tools is a true Windows program complete with toolbars and hyperlinked help. All data is checked at the time of entry so that no improper data can be entered. Most of the functions in E-Tools require only a few items of input data. For example, the Wire Sizing function requires the load in either amps, horsepower, or kVA. Given the voltage, wire length, material (aluminum or copper) and conduit type, E-Tools sizes the smallest wire that does not exceed NEC ampacity ratings or the user specified allowable % voltage drop.
Program Output
E-Tools provides several different reports that summarize the results of each tool, including wire sizing, voltage drop, etc. All reports can be selectively printed to the screen, printer, or disk file.
Calculation Method
The primary sources for the calculation methods in E-Tools are the National Electrical Code Handbook and the IES Lighting Handbook. The E-Tools user's manual includes a complete list of references where the methodology and equations used by the program can be found. All results computed by E-Tools can be easily verified by hand.