The Fire Protection Research Founded by National Fire Protection Association or NFPA currently sponsored an assembly for the Second Draft meetings for the National Electrical Code (NEC) comprised of Electrical Safety Research Advisory Committee (ESRAC). This took place in San Diego, California last October. Represented by Vince Baclawski, NEMA took part in this general Assembly. Baclawski is the senior technical director, together with Jack Lyons the Northeast field representative.
The meeting was started and opened by Casey Grand the director of the The Fire Protection Research Founded by National Fire Protection Association together with Donny Cook the advisory committee chair. The meeting started with the members of the co-making panels and other stakeholders coming from different industries regarding the electrical safety features that should take part in the foundation’s projects concerning about research.
The agenda in this meeting is comprised of the total overview of the organization: its current, completed, and planned or proposed projects. One of which is the discussion about the Power over Ethernet or others call it as (PoE) and several discussions about pools and marinas.
In identifying some future possible concerns, the foundation greatly put emphasis on what is the greatest value or impact that can be done for the electroindustry. With this in mind, the ESRAC functions as the trailblazing committee to make the foundation consider projects such as these.
To increase the number of installations the PoE systems are making caused concerns to arise because of the possible effects of the installations on the building safety. With this in mind, the NEC has successfully addressed some of the cabling structures placed within the buildings by heavily focusing on some of the bundling data cables that helps engineers to make up the overall system.
With this in mind, overheating is a safety and performance issue for the PoE systems. In addition to this, the Article 725 has mentioned the possible concerns regarding the ampacity tables for data/power cables that comes with the new cable designations. There are some key takeaways on this, they are:
Proper identification for the inherently safe installations
Expansion in the usage of life safety systems
Safety of the personnel working in electric industries
Identify the code applications and the necessary licensing requirements
Recent issues about cybersecurity
Together with valuable inputs from the attendees, the meeting identified the top five topics research projects can focus on, such as:
Proper code adoption and regulatory licensing
Equipment grounding conductors
Types of cord-connections installed in the kitchens
Electrical systems installed in some Marinas and Pools, that may need protection from ingress of water, may need NEMA 4x enclosure for splashing water or NEMA 6p enclosures if it needs to be submersion to protect them.
Data gathered about the collection on electrical fires
In a separate meeting, it was said in the discussion that NEMA is enabled to help in the development and sponsorship on webinars about the necessary fundamentals, benefits, and some limitations on the PoE installed systems.