You have spent a small fortune on building automation. Occupancy sensors in every room. Smart lighting that dims itself based on daylight levels. An HVAC system with more processing power than your first computer. And yet, something keeps going wrong. Sensors drop offline. The lighting flickers during peak hours. Your building management system throws errors that nobody can quite explain.

Most people blame the technology. The vendor gets called back, the software gets updated, and everyone hopes the problem goes away. It rarely does. Because the real culprit is not your shiny new kit. It is what lies behind the walls: electrical infrastructure that was never designed for what you are now asking it to do.

The Smartest Technology Cannot Outsmart Dodgy Wiring

Think of it like building a house. You can install the most beautiful kitchen, the finest bathrooms, the cleverest home automation money can buy. None of it matters if the foundations are shifting. Smart buildings work the same way. IoT devices, connected lighting, automated climate control: they all share one critical dependency. They need stable, clean electrical power. Not just power that is ‘on’, but power that behaves predictably, without the voltage fluctuations and waveform distortions that wreak havoc on sensitive electronics.

A commercial building today might contain thousands of connected devices. Twenty years ago, the same space would have had a few dozen. The electrical system designed for fluorescent tubes and desktop computers is now expected to support LED drivers, variable speed motors, network switches, and an army of sensors communicating wirelessly. Is anyone surprised when things start misbehaving?

Under Safe Electric’s certification framework, electrical installations must meet specific standards. But compliance is only the starting point. A system can be perfectly compliant and still utterly unsuitable for the demands of modern building technology.

What Power Quality Problems Actually Look Like

Voltage sags. The term sounds almost harmless. In reality, a sag is a brief dip in voltage that lasts anywhere from a few milliseconds to a couple of seconds. Your lights might not even flicker. But that programmable logic controller running your building automation? It just reset itself. Your occupancy sensors lost their calibration. The smart lighting reverted to default settings. You will not notice until someone complains that the third floor is freezing whilst the second floor is sweltering.

Then there are harmonics. When non-linear loads draw current in pulses rather than smooth sine waves, they create distortions that ripple through your electrical system. LED drivers do this. Variable frequency drives do this. The switch-mode power supplies in every piece of electronic equipment do this. Individually, no big deal. Collectively, they generate heat in cables, interfere with sensitive equipment, and can cause neutral conductors to overheat in ways that conventional protection devices were never designed to detect.

A building might experience dozens of these events monthly without anyone noticing. Equipment fails prematurely. Systems behave erratically. Everyone assumes it is just ‘technology being technology’. The NSAI’s electrotechnical standards programme exists precisely because these issues matter far more than most building operators realise.

The Load Calculation Problem Nobody Mentions

Here is where the real trouble sits. Many commercial buildings in Ireland were wired decades ago. The calculations assumed resistive loads: heaters, incandescent lights, equipment that draws current predictably. Modern electronic loads behave differently. They draw current in sharp spikes. They generate electromagnetic noise. They create conditions that the original designers never anticipated.

On paper, your building might have adequate electrical capacity. The maximum demand calculations work out. But the nature of how modern equipment draws power creates problems that simple capacity figures cannot capture. Circuit protection designed for one type of load may not respond appropriately to another. Neutral conductors sized for balanced three-phase systems become overloaded when harmonic currents add up rather than cancel out.

This creates situations where a building operates at the edge of its practical limits whilst appearing perfectly healthy on the paperwork. Then someone adds a few more devices, installs another smart system, and suddenly there are problems everywhere. The SEAI’s building regulations guidance addresses energy performance, but understanding load characteristics requires more detailed assessment.

Why Skipping Proper Testing Costs More Than You Save

Landlords and facility managers face constant pressure to control costs. Periodic electrical inspection feels like bureaucratic box-ticking. The temptation to delay, to skip, to find a cheaper option is understandable. But uncertified or improperly maintained electrical systems create cascading costs that dwarf the price of doing things properly.

Insurance claims become complicated when certification is missing or outdated. Equipment warranties may be voided if manufacturers can demonstrate that power quality issues caused the failure. Tenant relationships sour when building systems keep failing and nobody can explain why. More fundamentally, smart building technology simply will not perform to specification when installed on compromised infrastructure.

Problems like insulation breakdown, earth fault current paths, and deteriorating connections do not announce themselves. They only show up when someone with the right instruments and expertise looks for them. For electrical contractors conducting these assessments, quality testing equipment makes the difference between finding issues and missing them entirely. Testers.ie, Ireland’s Fluke distributor, supplies the kind of professional-grade instruments that separate thorough assessment from superficial inspection.

The Health and Safety Authority’s guidance on electrical certification makes clear what is required. But requirements are minimums, not aspirations. Buildings expecting to support sophisticated technology need assessment that goes beyond minimum compliance.

Getting the Sequence Right

Before specifying any connected technology, commission a comprehensive electrical assessment. Not just checking that sockets work. Power quality analysis. Load profiling. Evaluation of circuit protection adequacy. Verification of earthing systems. Measurement of harmonic distortion levels. Assessment of neutral conductor capacity. Thermal imaging to identify hotspots indicating deteriorating connections.

This sounds expensive. It is considerably cheaper than installing smart systems that never work properly because the electrical foundation cannot support them. It is cheaper than premature equipment failures. Cheaper than the endless troubleshooting calls that never quite resolve the underlying problem.

For electrical contractors, helping clients understand this creates opportunities. When someone questions why proper preparation costs what it does, the answer is straightforward: the alternative is technology that creates ongoing headaches instead of delivering promised benefits. There are broader implications too, as explored in discussions around sustainability and energy management in commercial buildings.

The Compliance Dimension

Ireland’s electrical installation standards exist for good reason. I.S. 10101:2020, the National Rules for Electrical Installations, sets out specific requirements for circuit protection, cable ratings, and installation practices. Smart building technology does not create exemptions. If anything, the complexity of modern installations makes compliance more important, not less.

Under the 2007 Safety Health and Welfare at Work (General Application) Regulations, employers must ensure electrical installations are periodically tested by competent persons. For commercial landlords, this is not optional. The Safe Electric guidance on I.S. 10101:2020 provides detail on what compliance actually requires.

Compliance is not separate from successful technology deployment. It is a prerequisite. Buildings that cut corners on electrical standards inevitably discover that their smart systems never quite work as advertised. The problems manifest in ways that seem unconnected to electrical infrastructure, which is precisely why they persist.

Making the Business Case

Unreliable building systems cost money. Wasted energy from equipment cycling on and off. Premature replacement of devices that should have lasted years longer. Lost productivity when systems fail. Tenant dissatisfaction that affects lease renewals. These costs accumulate invisibly, which makes them easy to ignore. But they are real.

Professional electrical assessment and remediation should not be framed as regulatory burden. It is enabling investment. It is what allows smart technology to deliver promised returns rather than becoming an expensive source of frustration. Buildings with verified power quality and adequate electrical infrastructure command better rental values, attract quality tenants, and operate more efficiently.

For electrical contractors, this framing helps justify proper pricing for thorough work. Competing on the cheapest quote for minimum compliance is a race to the bottom that serves nobody well. The clients who understand what they are actually buying become the best long-term relationships.

As buildings become more connected and electrical loads become more complex, the gap between premises with sound electrical foundations and those without will only widen. The question is not whether your building needs proper electrical infrastructure to support smart technology. It is whether you address it now, on your terms, or later, when problems force your hand.