690.12(C) initiation device

[ggunn]

Yup, this is one of the big soft cost drivers in the US versus say Germany. In Germany, there is one utility for the whole country and one set of codes and standards. In the US there are thousands of utilities all with their own flavor of requirements and thousands of more AHJs with variable requirements loosely based on a national electrical and building code.

And in the case of one jurisdiction I deal with all the time but will not name, there is an electrician who has worked his way up to a chief inspector's position who does not really understand how electricity works. He has managed to sneak something really stupid into the distributed generation interconnection guide which demonstrates his lack of understanding. He has no supervisor who is technical and his contribution got no peer review before the document was adopted by the City Council and given the force of law. Heavy sigh. I ran afoul of it a couple of months ago but now it's just another entry in the spreadsheet.

I hasten to add that this is in no way a slam against electricians. All the electricians I work with on a daily basis agree that this inspector's grasp of things electrical leaves something to be desired.