battery powered lights

[rick hart]

This will go beyond the NEC and for that I apologize in advance.
In a building (healthcare) where Life Safety Branch emergency power is available and the exit and egress lighting is supplied through legally required standby generators, are there any locations where battery powered lights are required?
I know that battery powered lights can be used INSTEAD of a generator but when there IS generator, that is up in less than 10 seconds, are there additionally required locations?
I have found the term "where required" but haven't stumbled across the requirements for where- generator room and life support locations are all that I can find.
If anyone can help out, I thank them in advance.

 

[caj1962]

Re: battery powered lights

Rick
the requirements you seek are in NFPA99. And you are correct with the placements. Generator romm or enclousure, surgery suites, maybe even some emergency rooms, and more. If you need an exacy code referance and I will dig it out for you.

 

[caj1962]

Re: battery powered lights

Guess I jumped to soon the requirements for the generator room are in NFPA 110. Chapter 7.4.1

 

[rick hart]

Re: battery powered lights

I have gone through 99, 101 and 70 pretty detailed looking for where these lights are required to be installed. I don't have a current 110 for which I am ashamed to admit. I have the online NFC (does anybody else hate these online things as much as me? (I haven't found a good way to highlight my monitor.) Give me paper!
Thanks for the heads up.
I'm off to the bookstore!!

 

[msd]

Re: battery powered lights

517.33FPN: It is important to analyze the consequences of supplying an area with only critical care branch power when failure occurs between the area and the transfer switch.

It would seem that redundant safety should be the #1 concern. Should the generator fail to start, what then?

 

[rick hart]

Re: battery powered lights

If the generators fail to start, I have real problems. In this instance, five generators would have to fail to start before the Life Safety branch is effected. Life Safety is what I call the "abandon ship" branch because only things that get you out of the building are connected, like exit lights, fire alarms, etc.
My question is rooted in required maintenance for required battery lights; required lights must be tested periodically to make sure they will burn 1.5 hours. If lights are required, fine. But, if lights are above requirement and failure of the battery only reduces safety to minimum level, that makes the lights a convenience....of sorts. I'm not advocating removing any battery lights, just trying to define criticality of them. There can be hundreds of them but only a handful are required.
The advisory in FPN 517.33 concerns sub-division of Critical (patient bedside) branch. What it addresses is that if EVERYTHING is on the critical branch in an area, you can never take the system down for maintenance- an annual event if NETA recommendations are followed or if a component of Critical branch fails. If there are a combination of systems available, the patient care loads can be switched, point of use, during maintenance. The whole point of having backup power is to have two (or more) systems that are available in special circumstances.

 

[steve66]

Re: battery powered lights

I don't see anything in NFPA 110 that requires the battery powered light at the generator to run for 1.5 hours.

On the other hand, NFPA 99 requires battery powered lights in anesthesa locations to meet NEC 700.12(E), which means it has to last 90 min.

Steve

 

[rick hart]

Re: battery powered lights

NFPA 101 7.9.3 is the requirement