Main Products
September 17, 2026
An electrical room is a critical part of a power distribution system. When a fire or electrical fault occurs, simply writing “cut off the power” in an emergency plan is not enough.
Unlike an ordinary office fire, an electrical room may involve multiple power sources, including incoming power supplies, outgoing circuits, bus couplers, dual power supplies, UPS systems, generators, photovoltaic systems, energy storage systems, and power supplies for fire protection equipment.
Therefore, power isolation during an electrical fire is not a single action. It requires clear decisions about what to disconnect, where to disconnect it, who should operate the equipment, how to disconnect it safely, what to do if isolation fails, and how to confirm that the equipment is in a safe condition.
GB 26860-2011, Safety Code of Electric Power Industry—Electrical Safety Work Regulations for Power Plants and Substations, specifies safety measures related to power outages, electrical verification, grounding, and prevention of unintended energization. An important principle is that simply opening a switch does not necessarily mean that the equipment has been confirmed to be in a de-energized and safe state.
For this reason, a practical electrical room fire emergency plan should cover much more than “cut off the power.”
A fire does not always begin with visible flames.
Early warning signs may include:
Burning or unusual odors
Abnormal equipment temperature
Smoke
Explosive or abnormal sounds
Abnormal electrical discharge
Arc flashes
Protection device operation
Temperature alarms
Fire alarm activation
The emergency plan should clearly define how personnel should respond to these different situations.
For example, it should specify when employees should immediately report the incident, when electrical personnel should make an assessment, when people are prohibited from approaching the equipment, and when the situation should be upgraded to a formal fire emergency.
Without such decision criteria, personnel may waste valuable time simply asking: “Is this actually a fire, and should we activate the emergency plan?”
An emergency plan may state “immediately disconnect the power,” but it must also answer a more practical question:
Who is responsible for doing it?
Depending on the facility, this may involve safety personnel, electricians, equipment managers, workshop supervisors, property management, or external maintenance contractors.
For high-voltage equipment in particular, personnel should never assume that whoever is closest to the switch should operate it.
A practical plan should clearly define:
The person responsible for emergency command
The person responsible for electrical assessment
The authorized electrical operator
The substitute person if the designated employee is absent
This helps prevent both delayed action and unsafe unauthorized operation.
This is one of the most commonly overlooked issues.
Suppose a low-voltage distribution cabinet is smoking. Can the operator immediately identify its upstream power source?
If employees have to search through drawings, locate labels, or call someone for confirmation, the emergency plan is not sufficiently practical.
The electrical system should have clearly corresponding:
Single-line diagrams
Cabinet numbers
Circuit names
Upstream power sources
Emergency isolation points
For critical facilities, an emergency response card can identify the accident area, safe isolation point, backup or secondary power source, and responsible personnel.
The objective is simple: during an emergency, personnel should follow a pre-verified power isolation relationship rather than trying to understand the entire distribution system under pressure.
This is a particularly important safety consideration.
If a switchgear cabinet is producing abnormal sounds, smoke, arc flashes, deformation, or flames, “disconnect the power first” should never be interpreted as “walk directly toward the faulty cabinet and operate its switch.”
Approaching energized electrical equipment during a serious fault can expose personnel to dangerous electrical hazards.
The emergency plan should therefore identify:
Whether power can be disconnected from the upstream side
Whether remote tripping is available
Whether there is a safe operating position outside the hazardous area
Where the safest isolation point is located
The GB 50116-2013 commentary concerning the location for disconnecting non-firefighting power supplies during a fire also emphasizes that disconnecting power at a substation can be safer in principle.
Therefore, an effective emergency plan should specify where power can be safely disconnected, rather than simply stating “disconnect the power.”
Opening one switch does not necessarily mean that all electrical energy has been removed.
With the increasing use of distributed photovoltaic systems, UPS equipment, and energy storage, the traditional assumption that “opening the main switch means the whole facility is de-energized” may no longer be valid.
The emergency plan should clearly identify all possible power sources in the affected area and specify how each one can be safely isolated.
Many emergency plans only describe the successful sequence:
Fire detected → Power disconnected → Fire extinguisher used → Fire extinguished.
Real emergencies do not always follow this sequence.
An effective emergency plan must therefore describe not only what should be done, but also what to do when the expected action cannot be completed.
This is one of the most important electrical safety principles.
Opening a circuit breaker is not the same as proving that equipment is de-energized.
GB 26860 reflects the principle that after power isolation, appropriate electrical safety measures such as verification of absence of voltage, grounding, and prevention of unintended re-energization are required.
However, emergency fire response and subsequent electrical maintenance are two different stages.
During an active fire, the priority is personnel safety, alarm activation, hazard isolation, evacuation, safe power disconnection, and preventing the incident from spreading. Personnel should not approach a smoking or arcing high-voltage cabinet simply to “check whether the power is really off.”
After the fire is controlled and equipment intervention becomes necessary, the system should enter the appropriate electrical safety and maintenance procedure.
The instruction “immediately disconnect the main power supply” can create another potential problem if it is applied without considering fire protection systems.
The emergency plan should distinguish between:
Non-firefighting loads that may need to be disconnected
and
Power supplies that must remain available for firefighting and emergency systems.
Relevant emergency procedures may require rapid disconnection of non-firefighting power to air-conditioning equipment and the affected area while maintaining power for firefighting systems.
The key question is:
Will disconnecting power to the affected area accidentally interrupt a critical fire protection system?
If the electrical team cannot answer this question clearly, the emergency plan needs further improvement.
Not every electrical cabinet fire should be approached with a fire extinguisher.
GB 55036-2022, General Code for Fire Protection Facilities, is a mandatory engineering construction code. According to the source material, for Class E fire locations, when energized equipment exceeds 1 kV and the power cannot be disconnected during firefighting, portable fire extinguishers should not be used for live-fire suppression.
Therefore, facilities containing equipment such as 10 kV switchgear should not simply state in their emergency plan: “Use a fire extinguisher immediately after discovering a fire.”
The plan should establish appropriate safety boundaries based on the equipment and circumstances.
An electrical room may be equipped with carbon dioxide extinguishers, ABC dry powder extinguishers, or other firefighting equipment.
Different extinguisher types have different applications and may have different effects on electrical equipment and subsequent maintenance.
In an actual emergency, employees should not have to read the extinguisher label for the first time while standing next to burning electrical equipment.
Emergency drills can sometimes look successful because everyone knows the basic sequence: raise the alarm, collect fire extinguishers, evacuate and assemble.
However, a real incident may create confusion.
For example:
Several people may search for fire extinguishers while nobody calls emergency services.
Employees may gather around the electrical cabinet instead of evacuating.
The electrician may focus on power isolation while nobody informs nearby production areas.
The emergency plan should clearly assign responsibilities for:
Emergency command
Electrical operations
Emergency calls and communications
Personnel evacuation
Safety perimeter control
Coordination with firefighters
Responsibilities should preferably be assigned by job position and backup relationship, rather than relying on only one named individual.
Schneider Authorized Low Voltage Switchgear 
Low Voltage Switchgear & Distribution Panels 
Medium Voltage Switchgear & Distribution Panels 
Prefabricated Substation 
Transformers 
