Complete Electrical Arc Hazard Classification System and Its Application

The standard for electrical safety in the workplace, National Fire Protection Association 70E, and relevant Occupational Safety and Health Act electrical safety standards evolved in the U.S. over the past 40 years to address the hazards of 60-Hz power that are faced primarily by electricians, linemen, and others performing facility and utility work. This leaves a substantial gap in the management of other types of electrical hazards including battery banks, dc power systems, capacitor banks, and solar power systems. Although many of these systems are fed by 50/60-Hz energy, we find substantial use of electrical energy, and the use of capacitors, inductors, batteries, solar, and radiofrequency (RF) power. The electrical hazards of these forms of electricity and their systems are different than for 50/60 Hz ac power. At the IEEE Electrical Safety Workshop in 2009, we presented a comprehensive approach to classifying the electrical shock hazards of all types of electricity, including various waveforms and various types of sources of electrical energy. That paper introduced a new comprehensive electrical shock hazard classification system that used a combination of voltage, shock current available, fault current available, power, energy, and waveform to classify all forms of electrical hazards with a focus on the shock hazard. That paper was based on research conducted over the past 100 years and on decades of experience. This paper continues the effort in understanding and managing all forms of injury from all forms of electricity with the introduction of a comprehensive approach to classifying all forms of injury from the electrical arc, including thermal, blast pressure, hearing, radiation, and shrapnel injury. The general term “arc” is divided into the arc, arc flash, and arc blast as a first subdivision of type of source of injury. Then, the parameters of voltage, short-circuit current, energy, waveform, gap distance, gap geometry, enclosure geometry, and time are used to choose various approaches to analysis. Recent efforts to understand, model, and estimate injury for these types of systems are reviewed. Most of the focus to understand and predict injury for dc, capacitor, solar, and RF arc hazards has been only in the past 10 years. A comprehensive approach to analyzing all forms of injury from all forms of electrical arcs is presented.