How to Sell Used Switchgear

Step 1: photograph the nameplate before anything else

The nameplate is the single most valuable piece of information about your switchgear. It carries the manufacturer, the bus amperage, the voltage class, the short circuit rating, the type designation and usually the year and the shop order number. A buyer who can read your nameplate can price the lineup in minutes; one who cannot has to guess conservatively, and conservative guesses always come in low.

Photograph it straight on, close enough to read, with the flash on if the plate sits in shadow. Then walk the length of the lineup and photograph each section's door labels. If the main plate is painted over or missing, photograph the gear anyway. Cubicle height and arrangement, the breaker escutcheons, the bus compartment and the cable entry all let an experienced buyer narrow the rating considerably.

Step 2: do not pull the breakers or cut the bus

This is where sellers most often destroy value. A drawout lineup with its breakers still racked in their cubicles is a usable assembly. The same lineup with the breakers pulled out and stacked in a corner is a pile of parts, and pairing breakers back to the correct cubicles afterward is slow, uncertain work that the next buyer prices in.

The same applies to the bus. Once somebody has cut the copper out for weight, the lineup is scrap and nothing can undo it. Leave the bus, the current transformers, the relays, the meters and the control wiring alone. Every one of those is worth more in place than sold separately as metal.

Step 3: find out whether it is resale-grade or scrap-grade

These are two entirely different prices. Resale-grade switchgear has intact bus and breakers, a rating and voltage class the market wants, and no water or arc damage in the critical compartments; it can be worth several times its metal value. Scrap-grade gear has burned bus, a flooded interior, fire damage or a rating nobody specifies any more, and it is worth copper, aluminum and steel content.

You generally cannot tell by looking at the outside. Dented covers and surface rust say nothing about the condition of the bus behind them. This is the single best reason to get a specialist opinion before calling a scrap yard, because the scrap decision is irreversible.

Step 4: get a firm price with the removal terms stated

A price is only meaningful alongside who pays to get the gear out. Separating a bolted lineup into sections, rigging them through a mechanical room door, getting them down a loading dock and hauling them several hundred miles is a real expense, and if it lands on you it can consume most of what you were paid.

Ask directly: is the number firm, does it include teardown, rigging and freight, and is payment before or after resale. Our answer is firm, included, and before — but the point is to ask whoever you are dealing with, and to get it in writing.

Step 5: plan access before the truck is dispatched

Most delays are access problems, not price problems. Gear in a basement electrical room, up a ramp, behind a locked gate or inside an operating facility needs the right equipment and sometimes a permit. Tell the buyer what the room looks like at quoting time, including door widths, the path to the dock and whether an elevator is involved, so the rigging plan matches reality.

If the lineup is still energised, a utility or licensed electrician disconnect has to come first. That is usually the longest lead item in the whole process, so start it early and let the buyer schedule around it.

Step 6: keep the paperwork

Hold on to the nameplate photos, the single-line drawing, any acceptance or maintenance test reports, and the bill of sale. Test reports in particular raise what a lineup is worth, because they shorten the next owner's commissioning work. A buyer who cannot produce clean paperwork for the transfer is a risk to you rather than a convenience.