Industry Exemptions

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Jeff Crisp

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Can someone tell me if Industries are exempt from certain electrical inspections. Our local authorities are wanting to inspect everything that we do at our 2 million square foot facility, and are becoming a nuisience.
 
I had a teacher who was an ME or EE and was the building engineer for a company called Bull here. They had an arrangement with the city of Phoenix that made them their own AHJ up to a certain point.

If they wanted to expand their building it wouldn't have applied, but for day to day and maintenance type work they were autonomous.
 
I think it depends a lot on how busy the local inspectors are and just what the local codes require.

When they are looking to justify their own existence they can get pretty obnoxious, understandably.

Most factories I have been in operate in a de facto self inspection mode for routine stuff and only get inspected for building expansions as another poster mentioned. I don't know if that is by some kind of local ordinance or just a matter of practicality.
 
Jeff Crisp said:
Can someone tell me if Industries are exempt from certain electrical inspections.
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There are not where I live.

This type of issue is decided on the local or state level there is no national standard.


Our local authorities are wanting to inspect everything that we do at our 2 million square foot facility, and are becoming a nuisience.
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Yeah, it would be nice if we would all do away with the nuisance of licenses, permits and inspections.:roll:
 
When the city was the AHJ we met and they had their rules (new stuff - inspected
maintaining equipment - not)

Same when the state took over.

Elec work exemption.

1. work done by liscensed master or j-man
and
2. is not work within an existing or new panel board
and
3. OCP 30A or less
and
4. not more than than 277 line to gnd
 
Here in Indiana industrial plants have always been exempt, maintenance at certain large commercial establishments and maintenance at trailer parks as where they have their own qualified staff can be allowed to do some inside work but nothing as far as working on new installs or services, other then changing fuses or a bad breaker.
 
I do not know why, but I never saw a city inspector in any of the dozens of petrochemical process plants in Houston and surrounding cities.

I guess that the cities defer to the on-site engineering. Probably safer that way.
 
Not sure how or why but our AHJ rarely performs inspections. About the only time it occurs is when we are installing a substation or making major changes to our power distribution system. Our corporate requirements for installations exceed the NEC so I might assume someone presented our standards to the AHJ many years ago and came to an agreement with them. Maybe you should talk to the AHJ and see what it would take to not have an inspection for routine maintenance and installations.
 
We have a plant in the area that is a major employer with distribuition world wide. I was called in to look at a small irrigation pump and was just amazed that this installation passed even the most basic planning. I could get the PP door open, but had to lay my head against the pump motor to even look at the overloads. 480v. Obviously leaving things to their engineers didn't mean much.

This was before PPE and now you can't pass gas there without a permit and two hours of training, so hopefully things have improved.

My guess was no inspection at all. I hope.
 
We added a 600 amp I-line breaker to an existing 3000 amp ditribution panel. Because the new 600 amps feeds a new MCC panel, our local authorities are treating as a seperately derived system. My understanding was that if it shares the same nuetral and ground system it was NOT a seprately derived system but a sub-panel.
 
Your understanding of a "separately derived system" is in keeping with the definition that appears in article 100. A subpanel does not meet that definition. You are right on this one.
 
.... speaking on behalf of DE

.... speaking on behalf of DE

Jeff Crisp said:
Can someone tell me if Industries are exempt from certain electrical inspections. Our local authorities are wanting to inspect everything that we do at our 2 million square foot facility, and are becoming a nuisience.
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Delaware has what they call an industrial exemption, sometimes referred to as the DuPont exemption because of it's origination. It requires that a DE Professional Engineer with 10+ years experience file a letter with the State that says he/he is in responsible charge of the electrical installations at the facility; and that a logbook be kept that gives a description of any work that is done. An inspection agency must come in once a year and inspect a few representative jobs from the list. If all's good on the sample lot, then the annual list is approved.

I did that at Scott Paper in Dover for years.

John M
 
hurk27 said:
Here in Indiana industrial plants have always been exempt, maintenance at certain large commercial establishments and maintenance at trailer parks as where they have their own qualified staff can be allowed to do some inside work but nothing as far as working on new installs or services, other then changing fuses or a bad breaker.
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It shows, too. I worked a couple weeks at Mittal Plant 2 and the only color wire they used was black. Even for grounding conductors. And that wasn't the worst of it. Our break trailer had a 100 amp main breaker panel and a big electric heater. We also had enough light for the 40 foot trailer and we also had a microwave and receptacles for charging batteries.

The panel was fed with about 100 feet of #10. Yeah, it got warm, but it was winter and wasn't expected to burn in half before spring.

I also saw hundreds of feet of RMC being held up by it's own conductors. That place was freaky scary.
 
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K8MHZ said:
It shows, too. I worked a couple weeks at Mittal Plant 2 and the only color wire they used was black. Even for grounding conductors. And that wasn't the worst of it. Our break trailer had a 100 amp main breaker panel and a big electric heater. We also had enough light for the 40 foot trailer and we also had a microwave and receptacles for charging batteries.

The panel was fed with about 100 feet of #10. Yeah, it got warm, but it was winter and wasn't expected to burn in half before spring.

I also saw hundreds of feet of RMC being held up by it's own conductors. That place was freaky scary.
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H'mmmm, guess where we get many of our inspectors in this area from:roll:
 
K8MHZ said:
Our break trailer had a 100 amp main breaker panel and a big electric heater. We also had enough light for the 40 foot trailer and we also had a microwave and receptacles for charging batteries.

The panel was fed with about 100 feet of #10. Yeah, it got warm, but it was winter and wasn't expected to burn in half before spring.
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Of course, break trailers are hooked up with scrap wire, tray cable, 4-conductor SO, 3-Cond. SO, or whatever, and it's all temporary so if the installation fails, that only serves to prove that it was, in fact, temporary! jk.
 
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