Wow, these are all awesome comments!
Wow, these are all awesome comments!
Thanks Guys!!! This is the exact stuff the NEC and UL committees needs to know before implementing new mandated requirements (which I'm on some of them and new to some of them). As for "action daves" comment of "who do you suggest pays for that". golly I have no good answer except for the following:
As for damage to homes/products from Arcing, I can tell you it's REAL! We (the appliance industry) see it a lot. Lots of Property damage. A sustained Arc Tracking Event (one that sounds like an Arc Welder) is very energetic and often produces over 1000 watts of power for several seconds. Electrical Enclosures have a hard time containing these violent events. Particularly with the increased use of plastics. There is only so much you can do with plastics regarding flame resistance. The 3rd party safety agencies (IE UL, IEC, CSA etc) know this as well. FYI, I have no problem replicating Arcing Events the burn thru those blue PVC receptacle boxes (in my laboratory).
As far as Glowing connections (as you folks call them), yes they too are a big problem. Particularly with high current applications. At this time, there seems to be no good practical way of detecting a glowing connection. We can only try to prevent them and contain them.
I look at Electrical Fire safety consisting of Prevention (quality), Detection (GFI, AFCI), and Containment (enclosures, sprinklers). We need them all... There is no one solution (even though our government thinks so) that will cover all safety failure modes.
Again, thanks for the comments!