SPECIAL REPORT

What electrical safety challenges

keep you up at night?
(and how can you overcome them?)

Sponsored by

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 PLANT SERVIC ES: SPEC IAL REPORT

What is your primary

Electrical Safety job function?
Survey Results Plant manager 5.9%

Maintenance manager 23.1%

Are you the 1 in 4 who thinks your plant
is not up to code? Maintenance engineer 9.1%

Maintenance technician 14.5%

Thomas Wilk, editor in chief Reliability engineer 8.1%

Reliability technician 3.8%

Plant Services readers have regularly weighed in Controls engineer 11.8%

on two key research topics – predictive maintenance

Plant engineer 11.8%
programs and workforce issues. Your responses have
Sales/marketing 3.8%
shed additional light on actions and attitudes that are
Applications engineer 3.2%
going on in real time on your plant floor. For 2018,
the Plant Services editors wanted to add a third IT 1.1%

research project into the mix, and the choice of topic Corporate executive 3.8%

was an easy one to make: electrical safety. No other 0 5 10 15 20 25

topic is as key to plant best practices as safety or as figure 1

important to team morale. And in terms of electrical

safety specifically, few other plant hazards are as
sudden or as invisible as electrical risks, especially arc
How long have
flash. In fact, close to one-quarter of survey respon- you been doing
dents said that they had been involved in an arc flash electrical repairs or
troubleshooting?
event, and 60% reported knowing someone who has
been involved in such an event.

8.0% 0-1 year

Future follow-up surveys will help reveal electrical
5.3% 2-5 years
safety trends over time; for now, the data provide
an insightful and current snapshot of electrical 15.5% 6-15 years
safety in the places where you spend a large chunk 71.1% 16+ years
of your time. Read on for the survey highlights, figure 2

and then download the full set of 2018 Electrical

Safety survey data at http://plnt.sv/1802-ES. certifications, and an analysis of the most common ob-
Here’s hoping your plant is a safe plant. stacles to achieving a safety-first, safety-always culture.

BACKGROUND / UP TO CODE? The survey was open from Oct.-Dec. 2017 and at-
This year’s electrical safety survey is designed as a tracted nearly 200 responses from Plant Services
benchmark study, with questions balanced across elec- readers. Figure 1 illustrate the types of jobs that survey
trical incidents, safety gear and technology, training and respondents hold, and Figures 2 and 3 show their

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 PLANT SERVIC ES: SPEC IAL REPORT

levels of electrical expertise and the types of industry

certifications they hold, respectively. Other ques-
Which certifications do
tions asked where you fit generationally (about half of you currently hold?
respondents are Boomers and older, and half are Gen
ASNT Level I Thermographer (5.9%)
X and Millennial); the size of your maintenance/reli-
ASNT Level II Thermographer (4.3%)
ability team (about half were between 5-50 people);
ASNT Level III Thermographer (3.2%)
and the number of plants your organization manages
CMRP through SMRP (5.9%)
(close to 70% of respondents work for organizations of
IAEI Certified Electrical Inspector (2.7%)
five plants or fewer).
NFPA Certified Electrical Safety Compliance Professional (5.3%)

NFPA Certified Electrical Safety Worker (5.3%)

One number in particular jumped out: 71% of re-
NICET Electrical Power Testing (3.2%)
spondents have at least 16 years of experience doing
State Licensed Journeyman or Higher (17.6%)
electrical repairs and troubleshooting. This year’s sur-
None (52.4%)
vey respondents are clearly an experienced bunch – a
Other (13.9%)
trend that extends to professional certifications as well:
figure 3
Nearly half of survey respondents have earned at least
one professional certification. Do you consider your plant
There also was one question on the survey designed to
electrically up to code?
uncover your overall perception of electrical safety at
your facility: Do you consider your plant electrically
up to code? As Figure 4 indicates, 25% of respondents
replied “no”; that share that did not vary significantly
across any of the demographic groups – job title, verti-
cal, generational, plant / team size, experience or certifi-
cation level – identified in the initial survey questions.
25% NO

This number maps interestingly onto two other survey

questions. The first of these asked about your facility’s figure 4

average time between electrical incidents. As Figure

5 shows, 25% of respondents said the average time
between incidents at their plant was six months or less,
and again the data did not vary significantly across
demographic categories.
The second question asked about whether your facility
engages in near-miss reporting, and 72% reported hav-
ing a formal near-miss reporting program in place. The
other 28% indicated that either an informal program
exists (18%) or no program is currently in place (10%).
TECHNOLOGY
This year’s survey asked six specific questions on the
types of electrical safety technology that are currently
in use at your facility; these data are available in the
full downloadable report (http://plnt.sv/1802-ES).
Some of the data highlights include the following.
Safety Technologies. The most commonly deployed
safety technologies reported by respondents are limit
(93%) and interlock (91%) switches, followed by

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 PLANT SERVIC ES: SPEC IAL REPORT
What is your facility’s average time
between electrical incidents?
figure 5
single-function relays (93%), motor control devices
(90%), PLCs and drives (87%), overcurrent protection
devices (86%), and proximity devices such as light
curtains (84%).
In fact, the only technology option listed in this ques-
tion being used by less than 70% of survey respondents
is IR windows/viewports: only 37% of respondents are
currently using them, and 49% report they have no
plans to do so in the future.
Personal Protective Equipment. When asked what
types of PPE are available for use, respondents cited
safety glasses (97%) and safety shoes (96%) the most,
followed by insulating gloves (87%), leather protector
gloves (86%), face shields (86%), and hard hats (85%).
The least-available types of equipment all fell into the
category of insulating equipment: insulating sleeves
(55%); insulating live-line tools (i.e., hotsticks, switch-
sticks, shotgun sticks, 54%); and IPE such as line
hoses, rubber hoods, and rubber blankets (50%). Also,
about 40% of respondents indicated that there were no
plans in place to make these types of insulating equip-
ment available to employees.
IR Cameras and Digital Technologies. Nearly 75%
of respondents indicated that they use portable IR
cameras in their facility; this data point maps well onto
the 72% of respondents who engage in IR thermog-
raphy as part of a predictive maintenance program.
Interestingly, there did not seem to be a connection
between respondents’ willingness to use portable IR
cameras and their use of IR windows: about two thirds
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6.4%
0-30 days
8.5%
31-90 days
52%
10.6%
91-180 days
22.7%
365 + days 181-365 days
of those who said they had no plans to deploy IR win-
dows still use portable IR cameras on the job.
When it comes to wearable safety systems and sensors,
just 1 in 3 respondents said they currently use wear-
ables, with 51% reporting that currently there are no
plans to implement this technology.
Finally, two questions asked about the degree to which
internet-enabled technologies are in use, with 44%
reporting that they are using the IoT to monitor their
electrical systems and 39% using the IoT to report on
system health.
Outsourcing. Not every plant has the full-time
resources to conduct electrical work – a fact that may
affect uptake of safety technologies. For this question,
77% of respondents said that they outsource installa-
tion work; 63% and 61% said they outsource testing
and repair work, respectively; and 43% said that they
outsource the condition monitoring of their electrical
systems (50% keep it in-house).
ELECTRICAL SAFETY CHALLENGES
For Plant Services readers, the results shown above
in Figure 6 are especially worth noting. Of the safety
challenges listed as options in this year’s survey, the
top trouble spot when it comes to electrical safety is
poor or ineffective equipment maintenance, with al-
most 11% of respondents rating it as a high challenge.
In fact, when the “medium” and “high” categories are
combined, two challenges emerge as most pressing:
 PLANT SERVIC ES: SPEC IAL REPORT

Rate the following electrical safety

challenges at your facility.
Not a factor (%) Low (%) Medium (%) HIgh (%)
Poor coordination with internal departments (i.e., EH&S) 41.4 31.4 21.4 5.7
Poor coordination with external agencies (i.e., OSHA) 51.4 27.9 15.0 5.7
Poor / ineffective training 35.7 31.4 24.3 8.6
Poor / ineffective PPE 55.7 29.3 12.1 2.9
Poor / ineffective dust mitigation 35.0 37.9 20.0 7.1
Poor / ineffective lockout / tagout 45.7 30.7 16.4 7.1
Poor / ineffective equipment maintenance 27.1 34.3 27.9 10.7
Poor / ineffective equipment grounding 42.9 35.0 12.9 9.3
Poor / ineffective incident reporting 45.7 30.7 18.6 5.0
Loose electrical connections 23.6 50.0 22.9 3.6
Slips, trips, falls 21.4 52.1 18.6 7.9
Contact with overhead or underground electrical lines 66.4 25.0 5.7 2.9

figure 6

(1) poor or ineffective equipment
maintenance, 39%; and (2) poor
or ineffective training, at 33%.
(Equipment grounding was close
behind maintenance in the “high”
category at 9.3%, but fewer re-
spondents considered it a medium
challenge.)
On the maintenance side, the
survey asked about the type of
predictive maintenance program
currently in place, with respondents
indicating that they were using a
combination of methods to monitor
their electrical systems. The four
most-used technologies are IR
thermography (72%), oil analysis
(70%), motor testing (67%), and vi-
bration analysis (65%), with predic-
tive modeling cited as the currently
least-used method (16%).
Two additional survey questions
help add context to respondents’
concern over training. The first
question asked about the frequency
of training, and 10% of respon-
dents indicated that training is
not required at all at their facil-
ity. A further 27% indicated that
training is required no more than
every two years. The better news is
that a comfortable majority (56%)
reported that they are required to
take annual training, such as an
OSHA refresher course; in addi-
tion, 7.4% of respondents engage in
quarterly training.
The survey also asked about types
of training methods, with 71% of
respondents indicating that tradi-
tional on-site technical training is
employed, about 56% reporting the
use of online courses or webinars,
and 10% reporting that augmented
or virtual reality is now being used
at their facility.
The good news is that three chal-
lenges are clearly at the bottom of
the list: poor coordination with
external agencies such as OSHA
(21%), poor or ineffective PPE
(15%), and contact with overhead or
underground electrical lines (9%).
When asked an open-ended ques-
tion about the one thing they would
do to improve electrical safety,
respondents reported the following:
• “ Training for nontechnical team
members on their electrical safety,
how to recognize hazards and
avoid them.”

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 PLANT SERVIC ES: SPEC IAL REPORT
• “ Teach everyone in the facility about the dangers of
electricity. This could be just as useful at home as
it is at work. Most employees don’t understand the
dangers involved in electricity.”
• “Make sure technicians understand the culture-of-
safety value, through considering the value of what
this contributes inside the organization.”
• “ Update disconnects and starters.”
• “Modernize with new technology.”
• “Find improved devices for wash-down areas.”
• “Need more training on test procedures.”
• “Getting trained and updated on new electrical safety
codes.”
• “Re-enactment of near misses.”
• “Include a simple one-page laminated card that indi-
cates the areas of high electrical danger.”
• “Replace old and worn out MCCs.”
• “Learn and use ultrasonic technology.”
• “Do an arc flash study, but upper management will
not fund.”
figure 7
Have you ever been
part of an OSHA
investigation? 28%
YES
Does your facility have
a policy in place on
energized work?
76%
YES
Have you received
training on NFPA 70E?
Up to expected changes in 70E 2018 23% 68%
Up to 70E 2015 35%
YES
Up to 70E 2012 10%
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• “ Better guarding, consistently applied at every sta-
tion. Set up a formal training program for OSHA
and NFPA 70E. Safety training requiring pass-
ing the course and enforcement of PPE rules and
LOTO rules.”
INCIDENTS AND TRAINING
The final section of the survey asked about electrical
incidents at your facility as well as your facility’s poli-
cies on energized work and the types of training avail-
able. As noted on Figure 5, about 25% of respondents
indicated that it had been six months or less since their
last electrical incident.
Figure 7 provides some background data that adds
context to responses about the frequency of electrical
incidents. Specifically, 28% of respondents also have
been part of an OSHA investigation, and 28% also
said that their facilities have either an informal near-
miss reporting program or none at all.
On the question of whether your facility has a policy
in place on energized work, 24% responded “no.” For
those that do have policies in place, the vast major-
ity of respondents (85%) indicated that the policy was
communicated during training, with the remain-
72% ing 15% balanced between online and public notices
NO
(email, bulletin boards, plastic sheets).
Finally, it was striking that the share of respondents
who reported no training on NFPA 70E was 33%. The
better news is that about 23% of respondents had al-
24%
ready been trained by the end of last year on expected
NO
changes in 70E 2018.
The survey also asked four specific questions on arc
flash training and incidents; all are captured in Figure
8. It’s interesting to note that ARC flash studies are
32%
NO performed on gear far less often than training on ARC
flash is provided to respondents; as one respondent
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 PLANT SERVIC ES: SPEC IAL REPORT

Have you been trained mentioned earlier, budgetary constraints may

specifically for play a role here.
ARC flash?
77% 23%
For this first Electrical Safety survey, we also
YES NO
added two questions on whether you (23%) or
someone you know (60%) has been involved
Have you done an
in an arc flash incident, and these data also
ARC flash study
are reported in Figure 8. However, as one
on your gear? respondent noted, both of these questions
57% 43%
YES NO would deliver more insight if further op-
tions were available for respondents to select
Have you ever been beyond “yes” and “no”; for example, these
options could include whether or not the
involved in an arc
incident involved people, or people but no
flash incident?
injuries, or incidents with lost time.
23% 77%
YES NO
If you’re interested in viewing the full data
Do you know someone set, please download it at http://plnt.sv/1802-
who has been involved ES, and then consider sending your thoughts
in an arc flash incident? to twilk@putman.net. We will be preparing
One person 36% 60% 40% an industry feedback article on this survey
2-5 People 21%
YES NO that will appear a future issue, and we would
More than five people 3%

value your insights.

figure 8

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FAQ: The role of protective relays in
your electrical safety strategy
Explore why protective relays are a necessary component of the power
delivery system.
By Dennis Moon, Senior Relay Instructor and Curriculum Advisor,
AVO Training
Protective relays are a critical
component of a safe and reliable
power delivery system. Protective
relays cover system abnormal
conditions from very simple, such
as overcurrent and voltage protec-
tion, to extremely complex, such as
impedance relays with communica-
tions over long distances. This FAQ
reviews why protective relays are an
essential component of any
electrical safety strategy.
Why are protective relays necessary?
Protective relays would not be
needed in power delivery systems if
the following were true:
• If system voltage, current, and
frequency always stayed within
operating parameters
• If none of the physical devices
ever aged or wore out
• If nature could be 100% con-
trolled so that there weren’t any
tornadoes, hurricanes, wind-
storms, lightning strikes, earth-
quakes, floods, ice storms, or
other natural disasters
PLANT SERVIC ES: SPEC IAL REPORT
• If we could prevent animals from
having any interaction with the
power delivery system
• If we can totally eliminate human
error
What happens during an electrical
system fault event?
First of all, we get significant cur-
rent rise and/or voltage drop that
results in:
• Large mechanical stresses caused
by big magnetic flux fields
• Thermal or heat stress
RELATIVELY MINOR
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• Reactive current flow that can
cause system disruption
• Possible negative sequence cur-
rents
• Possible zero sequence currents
• A rc, blast, and burn functions
Here’s what happens when there is
a significant rise in current. Some
bus faults may exceed 200,000
amps depending on the available
source current. There are very few
devices in the power delivery sys-
tem that can withstand that kind
of current for very long. This high
current will cause severe thermal
damage to power system compo-
nents and will last until one of the
following happens:
• Phase separation
• Circuit breaker operation
• Loss of source
There can also be a drop in volt-
age. If the voltage drops and the
load is fixed, the current must rise.
 PLANT SERVIC ES: SPEC IAL REPORT

Even if a power delivery system

RELATIVELY MAJOR
isn’t involved in the fault, if it sees
a voltage drop, the current in that
unfaulted power delivery system
is going to rise. Furthermore, the
drop in voltage causes under-volt-
age conditions, and, due in part to
higher fault current, system stabil-
ity may become an issue.

Along with the voltage drop and

the current rise, we get mechani-
cal stress due to the heavy mag-
netic flux field caused by the high
current. This heavy magnetic flux
causes severe stress on the welded,
molded, and anchored components
in the power system. The stress
may not be observable, but it’s still
there. High torque on metal com-
ponents caused by heavy flux may
cause more damage than the arc,
blast, and burn generally associated
with fault current.
What’s the purpose of protective
relays?
The purpose of the protective
relay is to protect every device
in the power delivery system; to
be selective so that the circuit
breaker, the device closest to
the fault, operates first; and to
provide system protection while
allowing normal system operation
There are generally three types of
protective relays
• Mechanical protective relays that
operate on magnetic principle
CATASTROPHIC
• Solid state devices that use dis-
crete components
• Numerical or microprocessor-
based relays that directly convert
the analog AC signal into a direct
digital signal
All protective relays have some
common traits that are necessary
for them to operate. Relay inputs
come from current transformers
(CTs); and potential transformers
(PTs), also called voltage trans-
formers. These CTs and PTs are
necessary so that we can reduce
primary current voltage, which can
be in the thousands of amps and
hundreds of thousands of volts, to
secondary voltages and currents
that are proportional to primary
but that are safe.
Another common factor is that all
relays have settings. A mechanical
relay has settings taps that directly
influence the AC input into the
relay. A solid state device also has
taps, but those taps control the DC
portion, or discrete component
portion, of the relay. A micro-
processor-based or numeric relay
setting allows users to imprint the
numeric value for the setting on the
microprocessor chip itself, and the
relay determines from the micro-
processor whether or not settings

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have been exceeded and whether or
not a trip should be issued.
The third thing that all relays have
in common is a trip circuit.
How do relays operate?
The most standard and common
relay in the power system is the over-
current relay. It offers instantaneous
overcurrent operating, which is a 50
device by IEEE designation. Its set-
ting comes from short circuit analy-
sis, and it operates in three cycles or
less, with no intentional time delay.
It’s instantaneous operating.
There is another type of overcur-
rent relay called the time overcur-
rent relay. Its designation is number
51, it’s set as per a coordination
study, and it uses various inverse
time curves. By inverse, we mean
that the higher the current, the
faster the relay operates.
Another type of relay operating
principle is the differential operating
principle. The differential operating
principle compares currents on each
side of the protected device.
CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE
WATCH THE ON-DEMAND WEBINAR
 rotective Relays in the Power Delivery System:
P
How it all fits together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJr38rf7Wto&t=2665s
PLANT SERVIC ES: SPEC IAL REPORT
TYPES OF FAULTS
• Three-Phase Fault to Ground or Three-Phase Fault
A
B OR
C
• Phase-to-Phase Fault
A
B
C
• Phase-to-Ground Fault
A
B
C
• Phase-to-Phase-to-Ground Fault
A
B
C
The final type of differential differential relay, the relay has to be
principle is the transformer dif- able to differentiate between inrush
ferential. The current on the high current and fault current. It has to
voltage side and the current on the know what the difference is.
low voltage side of the transformer
have to match by ratio. If they Furthermore, if we’re passing fault
don’t match by ratio, there’s some- current through the protected zone,
thing wrong and the associated we don’t want a trip. Our relay has
circuit breakers are going to trip. to know whether we’ve got through
current or whether we have an
There are a few more differential internal fault. If it’s in zone, we
operating principles that are very want a trip instantaneously. If it’s a
interesting. As we’ve already said, through fault, we don’t want to
if the different currents exceed trip. So the relay has to be able to
setting, then we’re going to cause differentiate between different
relay operation. However, with a types of currents that it feeds in the
power system.
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The one-stop for competency-based, hands-on
Protective Relay Maintenance training courses.
Offering over 57 Electrical Safety and Maintenance Courses
Our Protective Relay Maintenance courses are intensive, hands-on, lab oriented
presentation. Students will learn distribution protection combined with hands-
on, realistic training on actual relays. Laboratory exercises covers proper relay
maintenance, specific test procedures, and detailed adjustment and calibration
procedures utilizing state of the art relay test sets.

AVO Training Institute, provides safety program development for all types of
industries worldwide. Call today, we can help keep your company compliant,
but more importantly help keep your people safe from the hazards of electricity.

Bring the training to your facility, call today for a quote 877-594-3156
or visit www.avotraining.com