Accept 4-144: Services to be Outside

[iwire]

I can see this at possibly minimizing damage if the customer can shut off the power in an emergency instead of waiting on the fire department or poco to arrive. Not everybody lives within 5 minutes of a fire station.

Can you describe a realistic scenario where this could help?

In my opinion service disconnects are not intended to be EPOs.

[cadpoint]

Jezz George, If your only comment is to state Accept or Reject and drop a statement, what's the point.

Put a poll on everything and let us vote.

[jim dungar]

I can see this at possibly minimizing damage if the customer can shut off the power in an emergency instead of waiting on the fire department or poco to arrive. Not everybody lives within 5 minutes of a fire station.

Then it becomes a design issue, not an NEC mandate.

[cadpoint]

OK, look up "design" in merriam-webster! OK, here's the link instead.

Fine let's go with intransitive verb...

[George Stolz]

Jezz George, If your only comment is to state Accept or Reject and drop a statement, what's the point.

Put a poll on everything and let us vote.

Not everything is a poll, Jude.

I'm mostly looking for arguments either way, which will sway the outcome of the comment.

[cadpoint]

Not everything is a poll, Jude.

I'm mostly looking for arguments either way, which will sway the outcome of the comment.

Fine, it also took me three readings of three differnet Dropped NEC's to understand that point. Don't get me wrong, I read and re-read, I'll stay with my statement.

If your's in nothing more than your comment of ... and nothing else but only " Accept or Reject ", than you haven't done nothing for those playing alone at the House. JMO.


Your own comment of accept or Reject is built in to the OP, Why Argue with George...

[hurk27]

I have a different angle to this idea that would not only give you the safety for fire personnel to remove power to a building but also make it much safer in pulling a meter to change out a meter.

My idea is to require meter bases with a line side disconnect built in to cold sequence the meter, some POCOs already require this for services, what if we were able to get a requirement that would require only 400 amp and below meters to have a built in feature that would allow the service entrance conductors to be disconnected, this would also increase the safety for POCO employees changing meters, as well as giving a place to kill the power to a building in an emergency.

One. there would be no requirement of relocating the service main disconnect point to the outside of the building because it would not have any OCPD so 4-wire feeder would not be required as an added cost.

Two. it would be a standard available meter base so the cost over a separate disconnect with OCPDs would be minimal.

Now we are offering safety to a wider group of people with a much less cost fiscal impact that can block many codes from being accepted, the exception to this requirement would be if a disconnect with OCPD's were installed.

I'm all for safety but lets keep the cost down when we implement it?

now I would say this approach would require any CT-ed services to be exempt so this would limit this to light commercial under 400 amps single phase or 200 amp 3-phase as these are the largest metered services we can get before our POCO requires CT metering.

I would believe that the design could be very similar to the by-pass meter bases where instead of connecting the line and load together it would just isolate the line lugs from the top meter stabs.

I'm sure that the manufactures of meter bases would jump on this requirment if they think they would make a buck, H'mmm sounds like the AFCI story

[kwired]

Utility vaults usually have restricted access by the customer.

Why would it have to be a utility controlled vault?

[Dennis Alwon]

What are the odds that a proposal gets put back after the CMP rejected it?

[iwire]

Why would it have to be a utility controlled vault?

If it was customer controlled we would be talking about feeders not service conductors.