Column – Allan Hill, NZEI

The New Zealand Electrical Institute has been recommended by the EWRB to participate in a technical committee to provide feedback to the EWRB on the review and recommendations regarding the electrical worker audit regimes.

In 2013 the Electrical Workers Registration Board (EWRB) approached JAS-ANZ to seek its view on the adequacy of the existing audit framework for monitoring the competency levels of electrical workers.

In particular the EWRB has been concerned that the audit regime may no longer be fit for purpose following recent changes to the Electrical (Safety) Regulations which came into effect on 1 July 2013.

Further, the EWRB is aware of a need and opportunity to tighten the audit regime in some critical areas unaffected by those regulatory changes.

JAS-ANZ has conducted its assessment of the EWRB audit framework and provided a draft report and preliminary recommendations to the EWRB. That draft report concludes that the existing audit framework requires a number of changes to meet the EWRBs obligations, and that those changes would naturally have effects elsewhere in the electricity sector.

The EWRB is interested in receiving industry feedback by way of a project technical committee on the JAS-ANZ report and recommendations prior to wider industry comment being sought.

Standards update

DR AS/NZS 4024.3610 Safety of machinery – Part 3610: Conveyors – General requirements (Revision of AS 1755-2000 (in part)) – to provide guidance and clarity in applying the principles articulated in the AS 4024.1 series of Standards to conveyors. Public comment on this draft standard closes on 18 February.

DR AS/NZS 4024.3611 Safety of machinery – Part 3611: Conveyors – Belt conveyors for bulk materials handling (Revision of AS 1755-2000 (in part)). To provide guidance and clarity in applying the principles articulated in the AS 4024.1 series of Standards to BMH belt conveyors. Comments are invited until 18 February.

AS/NZS 3000 amendment 3 Electrical Installations; (AU/NZ Wiring Rules), work has commenced on the preparation of amendment No. 3. The detailed drafting work of the amendment will not start until formal approval of the project is received from Standards Australia, this is expected in late February.

The content of the amendment is mainly for the clarification of the existing AS/NZS 3000 text provisions along with some updating required to cater for new or revised IEC, AS/NZS standards.

It is expected that a public comment draft of the AS/NZS 3000 amendment 3 would be released mid year.

AS/NZS 3010 Electrical Installations – Generating Sets revision. Work on drafting of this revision is largely complete .

The layout of AS/NZS 3010 has been changed so that the main text of the standard will cover generating sets connected to an electrical installation by installation wiring only and the connection to an electrical installation by a supply lead and plug/ socket arrangements. The scope of the standard has been increased to cater for 1 + 1, N + 1 generating sets arrangements and to provide for closed transition load changeover switches.

It was originally proposed that AS 2790 Generating set, would have been updated to cater for a wider range of generating sets currently available and for the connection of portable appliances by a plug /socket arrangements.

The Standards Australia committee responsible for the control of AS 2790 has been unwilling to revise this old standard to take in the wider scope requirement.

The AS/NZS 3010 project committee is now proposing to cover the connection of portable appliances to a portable generating set in an appendix. It is also proposing to a cover the engine and set construction requirements in an additional appendix. The covering of this additional material in AS/NZS 3010 will result in AS 2790 being withdrawn from the Standards Australia catalogue when the revised AS/NZS 3010 is issued.

AS/NZS 3012 Electrical Installations– Construction and Demolition Sites: Amendment No. 1; A corrective amendment has been under development for some time to make minor changes to the requirements for Portable Socket Outlet Assemblies and the minimum lighting level for access ways under power failure conditions. Considerable discussions and site measurements have taken place to come to a suitable minimum level of lighting on access ways.

The amendment is to be discussed in Sydney this month and it is expected the amendment will be approved for publishing shortly after the meeting.

EL-042 committee

Rapid advances and some delays in the Photo Voltaic (PV) equipment approvals for grid connect inverter systems to IEC 62109 have continued to occur in the International and in Australia and New Zealand areas and this has resulted in delays in the completion of AS/NZS 4777 series and the AS/NZS 5033 standards.

The volume of public comments received for these three standards were high and covered a wide area of the coverage of each standard. To resolve all comments and cater for new provisions required for new equipment becoming available, have made the issue of a second public comment document necessary before formal approval to publish of the standards was sought

To date AS/NZS 5033 has been published, and the non-availability of inverters to IEC 62109 to date was

the cause of the recent amendment No.2 to AS/NZS 5033:2012. The need to cater for recently available micro-inverters has resulted in an AS/NZS 5033 public comment document being released in mid-2013. The public comments received have now been incorporated into the base AS/NZS 5033 and committee final approval to publish is being sought to proceed to publication.

As a matter of interest, AS/NZS 5033 is being used as the basis for an IEC standard for PV arrays.

To date AS/NZS 4777.1 and AS/NZS 4777.2 Grid connection inverter systems drafts have been released for public comment and this has resulted in a large volume of public comment.

It has taken some time for the committee to work through the public comments received and has resulted in some extensive changes in some areas of the draft document being necessary.

As a final check, it is proposed to release the revised drafts of AS/NZS 4777.1 and AS/NZS 4777.2 for a short period (approx. six weeks) of further public comment.

Hopefully, the public comment received will be very small and the final committee approval to publish the standards is able to proceed after the formal Standards New Zealand and Standards Australia approvals in early this year.

NZ Standards

Electrical Installations Co-ordination committee meets on an “as required” basis and will also be used as the equal of a “State committee” for the vetting of the NZ only “AS/NZS 3000 Amendment No. 3” proposals, some of the Section 7 amendments from all EL-001 members will also be checked by this committee.

For the purposes of this vetting, face to face meetings may not be required.

LV supply report committee

Some helpful public comments where received and these have been incorporated into the report to be presented to Energy Safety, which had commissioned the report.

Until the decision is made to adopt all recommendations, or only partly adopt the report in a modified form, the work of the original drafting committee has been completed.

The drafting committee is being retained together, and may have others may be co-opted to complete any work required; one of those functions may be the drafting of a “TT requirements supplement to AS/NZS 3000”.

The committee is mindful that some material suitable for the “up skilling” of electrical workers on the TT system of supply will be required if this recommendation of the report is adopted.

Dairy sheds P 6117 committee

The public comments on the Dairy shed document where considered at a meeting of the committee on the 12 December 2013.

Further discussions between Standards and Energy Safety (now WorkSafe) are in hand.