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In Australia’s regulated electrical industry, adhering to the Wiring Rules AS/NZS 3000 is mandatory. Manual methods such as hand calculations often fall short in ensuring safety, compliance, and efficiency, making electrical design software essential for modern projects. Quality electrical design software will ensure compliance and save your business time and money.
These electrical engineering design software packages streamline the project lifecycle for residential, institutional, governmental, commercial buildings, and industrial installations, from the electrical estimating stage, through to detailed electrical design, design review and approval, reporting and documentation, site installation and final handover.
The top software packages should be capable of designing a complete electrical installation and produce single-line diagrams of electrical networks comprising of generators and transformers with high-voltage protection relays or fuses, multiple cascading switchboards, power cables, provide a database of adjustable circuit breakers and fuses, power factor correction, and more.
These software packages should perform accurate calculations in accordance with the standards such as cable sizing, voltage drop calculations for balanced or unbalanced systems, conduit sizing, fault loop impedance analysis, fault level calculations, arc flash analysis, and protection discrimination/coordination, ensuring compliance, minimising errors and saving time.
In this article, we compare the top three electrical power design software packages to be used in Australia, including our own. By examining their features and capabilities, you can make an informed decision for your next project.
1. ELEK Cable Pro Web
ELEK Cable Pro Web software is one of the best software packages for electrical calculations developed by ELEK Software, an Australian-owned company specializing in developing professional electrical design software. ELEK Cable Pro Web is the latest version of the original CableCALC Pro, widely used by the electrical industry in Australia since 2009. The software is web-based software that requires no installation and can be assessed on any device including desktop, laptop, tablet, or mobile devices via a web browser. The software can design complete electrical installations and includes many calculation types and features to achieve this.
Cable Sizing – The cable sizing calculator is the most accurate and comprehensive on the market and includes all the cable types and installation methods covered by AS/NZS 3008.1. It automatically calculates minimum active and earth cable size, accurate voltage drop, short-circuit rating, conduit size, fault loop impedance, and derating factors. In addition, the cable sizing calculator includes flexible aluminium (Tricab) cables, economic cable sizing, and aluminium earth conductors. The reporting includes references to the tables and columns in the standards.
Maximum Demand – The maximum demand calculator includes all the installation types, the load types and utilises the rules from AS/NZS 3000, as well as custom diversity factors. It can automatically balance your single-phase loads across the phases making it the most advanced maximum demand calculator on the market.
Cable Pulling – The cable pulling calculator helps designers to determine the actual force required to pull cables through conduits without causing damage. This tool ensures the safe and efficient installation of cables by preventing excessive tension or sidewall pressures that could lead to cable insulation damage or cable deformation.
LV Network Design – The LV network calculator, as the name suggests, can design a complete electrical installation consisting of multiple switchboards including performing automatic mains, submains, and final subcircuit cable sizing including allowable voltage drop allocation and cumulative voltage drop for the cables of each network path, automatic maximum demand, fault loop impedance of each network path, transformer and generator sizing, fault level calculations at switchboards, HV relay/fuse protection, power factor correction, power factor at each switchboard and size capacitor banks, integrated arc flash levels at each switchboard, circuit breaker selection, and protection coordination including cable and transformer damage curves. This calculator produces a single line diagram of the electrical network which can be exported as an AutoCAD® file. There are detailed reports as well as a cable schedule report in Microsoft Excel® and arc flash labels in Microsoft Word® which can be automatically generated from the network. There are calculation checks performed in the background and helpful errors and warnings are displayed.
Protection Coordination – This protection coordination calculator helps electrical engineers and designers to conduct coordination and discrimination studies between protection devices. There is a huge database of protective devices which is searchable by manufacturer. Generic devices are available in case you can’t find an obsolete or existing device for older installations. Supported protective device manufacturers include ABB, Hager, NHP, Schneider, LS Electric, and Siemens. The settings of actual devices are completely adjustable.
Arc Flash – The arc flash calculator can perform 1 phase, 3 phase, and DC arc flash analysis to multiple standards including IEEE Std 1584, ENA NENS 09-2014, and DGUV-I 203-077. The calculator supports multiple PPE categories from NFPA 70E and Electrical Hazard Management Guideline. Arc flash labels direct to Microsoft Word® can be printed.
The app itself is well-designed, easy to use and understand, and of very high-quality. ELEK Software provides a live chat feature for live engineering support. The price versus the number of features available makes this software excellent value for money.
There is a 14-day free trial available to try now – sign-up here.
Pricing for ELEK Cable Pro Web:
ELEK Cable Pro Web offers three packages Basic, Standard, and Professional.
Visit this page to see the latest pricing.
Review and Rating - ELEK Cable Pro Web
Technical Support
Value for Money
- Pros:
Cloud-based software. Australian-based software. Local support, including live engineering chat. Well-designed, dependable and of high-quality. Several calculation types for fast calculations and can automatically design complete electrical networks with single line diagrams. Huge database of circuit breakers from manufacturers. Company accounts and team sharing features. Excellent reporting, documentation, and tutorials.
- Cons:
Some advanced features not currently available: User-defined time-current curves, harmonic analysis, and network resonance calculations. light fitting and motor libraries. active and passive harmonic filter sizing.
2. PowerCad – Electrical engineering design software
- PowerCad is one of the leading electrical engineering design software packages for electrical engineers in Australia. It is the oldest and was originally developed in Australia in 1991. However, in June 2023, PowerCad was sold to a USA-based operating and investment fund.
- PowerCad is a powerful tool that has a reputation in the electrical industry of being difficult to use, and because of this, unfortunately it does not bring many smiles to the faces of its users when it is mentioned. Considering the old technology it is built upon, PowerCad has done a good job for its day, but not for today’s industry. PowerCad has been built upon over time for performing complicated low-voltage electrical systems designs to Australian and some international electrical standards.
- PowerCad is software used mostly by electrical engineering design consultants and building services design engineers.
There are various packages of PowerCad software which are essentially feature-limited versions. These packages include PowerCad-5, PowerCalc-H, PowerCalc, QuickCable, QuickCable-LT. There is also PowerCad-M which is an Autodesk® Revit® package.
The main features of PowerCad-5 include:
- Accurate Cable Voltage Drop calculations.
- Time-current coordination curves with dynamic CB OCR adjustments on screen.
- Allows for user-defined time-current curves.
- Provides Single line diagram results, which can be exported to AutoCAD.
- L.V. Distribution Networking Modelling with automatic mains, sub mains, and final subcircuit cable selection.
- Incorporates Cable Thermal Stress and Let Through Energy calculation.
- Accurate fault loop impedance and ARC fault calculations (although not very accurate).
- Includes harmonic mitigation and harmonic analysis calculation operations.
- Active and passive harmonic filter sizing.
- AutoCAD interface for load inputs.
- Incorporates loads starting current profile.
- Light fitting and motor libraries are included.
- Direct online support.
- Includes AS/NZS, IEEE, BS, CP5 and IS (Indian) standards.
- Substation sizing and standby generator sizing.
- Accurate fault loop impedance and fault level calculations.
- Conduit sizing and cable sizing.
- Detailed reports with print preview.
- MEN link implementation.
Pricing for PowerCad-5:
A single user licence of PowerCad-5 starts from $3,000 yearly.
Review and Rating - PowerCad
Technical Support
Value for Money
- Pros:
Well-known and widely used software in Australia for performing complicated electrical network designs. Provides advanced calculations like harmonics analysis. Single-line diagram that is configurable and compatible with CAD. Libraries of protective devices, motors, lights, and cables.
- Cons:
Complicated, difficult to use, and outdated PC-only software. High cost. No longer Australian-owned and operated. There are doubts whether it will continue being developed. The documentation is almost non-existent. Technical engineering support is not provided.
3. MyPowerPac Web – Spearhead Software
MyPowerPac is another software that electrical engineers can use for designing low-voltage electrical systems to Australian Standards. Developed by Spearhead Software, established in 1987, PowerPac is one of the company’s most successful products. Unfortunately for its users, the Spearhead Software business was recently sold (March 2021) to the same USA-based operating and investment fund as PowerCad.
MyPowerPac is the web-based version of PowerPac software and provides three separate calculations, namely:
QuickCalc – This is used for cable sizing and fault current calculations.
Conduit – Conduit calculation is used to calculate the conduit size required incorporating conduit sizing for different types of cables.
Project – The project calculation is used to design LV networks and includes maximum demand calculations and cable sizing calculations.
The main features of MyPowerPac Web include:
- Automatic Active, neutral and earth sizing.
- Different types of supply including 1ph, 2ph, 3ph and DC supply.
- Accurate voltage drop calculation with a derating wizard to calculate the derating factor accurately.
- Includes all cable types and all installation methods.
- Incorporates all types of Electrical installations load groups and load types from standard.
- Allows LV network design with multiple switchboards and loads.
- Automatic maximum demand calculations for switchboards.
- Accurate fault loop calculation.
- Voltage rise calculations included.
- Alternative solutions available for cable size calculation.
- Conduit sizing with different types of cables inside.
- MEN Link implementation.
Pricing of MyPowerPac:
MyPowerPac provides four subscriptions Essentials, Lite, Plus, and Pro, with prices as shown below.
Essentials – $130 per year
Lite – $250 per year
Plus – $370 per year
Pro – $490 per year
Review and Rating - My Power Pac
Technical Support
Value for Money
- Pros:
Easy-to-use, cloud-based software. Well-known software in Australia for performing electrical cable sizing calculations.
- Cons:
No manufacturer protective devices. Limited features with basic functionality. Extra charges for DC cable sizing calculations. Engineering technical support is not provided. Documentation is lacking.
