Allan Hill, NZEI column

At an EL-001 joint standards committee meeting held in Adelaide early July 2014, the revision of AS/NZS 3000, AS/NZS 3010 and AS/NZS 3012 were considered and action taken to advance the revision of these joint standards.

AS/NZS 3000 Australian/New Zealand wiring rules

The revision work has commenced for the approved list of proposed amendments confirmed at the previous EL-001 meeting.

A number of working groups have been formed to cover each section (including the appendices) of AS/ NZS 3000 and the first proposals for amendments have been tabled and considered at the meeting.

In some cases, the proposed amendment was further amended during the EL-001 meeting, and these further amendments will be incorporated into the final draft amendment.

It is expected that once all proposed amendments have been considered by EL-001, that a draft of the proposed amendments will be issued for public comment.

It is estimated that it will be early 2015 before the public comment draft will be released.

AS/NZS 3010 generating sets

Consideration of the public comment received has been completed, for the adopted comments received; amendment of the draft standard is being completed by a drafting leader.

The responses to the drafting comments contained in the public comment draft will result in the superseding of AS 2790, which is an old standard that has remained unaltered since 1989 and has become very dated.

Two options for the updating of the content of AS 2790 are being considered, place the updated AS 2790 contents into a standalone appendix in the revised AS/NZS 3010, or, use an current ISO standard in lieu of AS 2790, this latter proposal was a “discovery” following the last committee meeting and has not been considered in any detail by the standard revision committee.

It will be necessary for the AS/NZS 3010 appendix to cover some new types of generating sets if the separate appendix for ex AS 2790 material, or if the ISO standard option is used.

These include inverter types that give a pure sine wave output suitable for sensitive electronic loads, and for the use of insulation monitoring devices (IMD) for the continuous monitoring of insulation failure in the generating set, or the connected portable appliances.

As the changes made to the public comment draft are extensive, it is proposed to re-issue the draft standard for a combined procedure public comment for a six-week period.

AS/NZS 3012 construction and demolition sites

Completion of site measurements of typical luminaires used in escape path lighting on a construction site have been completed to verify that a number of assumptions made will be able to be used to specify a suitable level of lighting. There are also some other minor amendments being made to the draft amendment to follow current practices used on construction and demolition sites.

As the changes made to the public comment draft are extensive, it is proposed to re-issue the draft standard for a combined procedure public comment for a six-week period.