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High current safety approach

Samuel Wane
Hi,

We are looking into the safety aspects of high current, low voltage and want to disseminate this to students.

Our university (agricultural) deals with a lot of low voltage (12-24V) but high current (100A+).

There seems to be a lot of legislation on the high voltage aspect with regard to passing current through the body, but can anyone point us towards some text regarding the how to safely handle large currents?

Thanks in advance,



Sam












Parents
  • 0
    The Electricity at Work Regulations don't discriminate between voltage levels, so their provisions also apply.



    The primary safety consideration with high current ELV is heat/fire/arcing rather than shock.



    Similar precautions and working practices should be applied: no "live" work on high-current conductors, isolation procedure, insulated tools, no jewllery (particularly important to remove watches and rings, as we don't want these to become hot from passing current), and also important Fused Test Leads (when used on battery supplies, test lead fuses with breaking capacities in kA are required) and Instruments to EN61010-series, and meeting where appropriate HSE Guidance Note GS38, etc.



    Safe working practices with battery supplies are included in the relevant standards, e.g. for Secondary Batteries the EN50272-series (which may be in the process of being replaced by the EN62485-series long-term). From personal experience, it's important not to miss the main battery fuse out of any design circuit, as in some fault conditions downstream protection may fail to operate.



    The biggest issue is that with lower-voltage ELV systems, the impedance of the fault can't be assumed to be "negligible" a with LV systems.


Reply
  • 0
    The Electricity at Work Regulations don't discriminate between voltage levels, so their provisions also apply.



    The primary safety consideration with high current ELV is heat/fire/arcing rather than shock.



    Similar precautions and working practices should be applied: no "live" work on high-current conductors, isolation procedure, insulated tools, no jewllery (particularly important to remove watches and rings, as we don't want these to become hot from passing current), and also important Fused Test Leads (when used on battery supplies, test lead fuses with breaking capacities in kA are required) and Instruments to EN61010-series, and meeting where appropriate HSE Guidance Note GS38, etc.



    Safe working practices with battery supplies are included in the relevant standards, e.g. for Secondary Batteries the EN50272-series (which may be in the process of being replaced by the EN62485-series long-term). From personal experience, it's important not to miss the main battery fuse out of any design circuit, as in some fault conditions downstream protection may fail to operate.



    The biggest issue is that with lower-voltage ELV systems, the impedance of the fault can't be assumed to be "negligible" a with LV systems.


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