[Shaun Colley]

Hi Craig,

We require Cat 2 for any access to or work on any live LV equipment.

What the individual wears is up to them as we have a selection of full visor type or balagoggle type face cover.

For inspection activities that don’t involve physically working on live LV we are trialling the use of arc rated cut rated gloves instead of insulating gloves due to the increased dextrerity and risk of arc flash vs electrocution.

[Stephen Small]

Hi Craig

It’s not actually about what others are doing – it’s about the electrical characteristics of your network.

Your engineers should have completed arc-flash calculations on the network, which gives direction to the level of PPE required (and arc-flash boundary distances to keep other workers and public safe).

EEA Arc Flash Guide is very helpful on how this should be done.

In saying that we are looking at the Arc-rated gloves like Shaun is…..

Regards

Stephen.

[Mark Keller]

Hi Craig,

We require face shields for opening service pillars, application safety measures (Insulating mats for live work) and for underground work the application of bonds prior to AP. For live work staff can then take the face shield off and wear safety glasses when the safety measures are in place. For overhead works we recommend working below the conductors to minimise arc flash risk.

Regards,

Mark

[warrenhthelines-co-nz]

Once the incident energy levels at 300mm distance exceed 1.2 Cal then a face shield would be required. What makes that energy level is (mostly) the size of the transformer and the LV network between you and that transformer (loop impedance can give you an approximation of this) and the speed that the protection will operate if a fault occurs. There are a few other factors too but those are the main ones. Once you know this you can set some basic rules of when to / not to use a face shield. Sorry I havent done the calcs for this yet as its something we need to do but once I have I am happy to share (unless someone else has already done it?)