In most cases it is the manufacturer's representatives on the Standard Technical Panels that slow down the process. So even where the code requires a new device or product it may be a couple of code cycles before the product standard is changed and manufacturers have the new product on the market.
But even after there is a code rule, they often delay the changes to the product standard to comply with the new code rule. Just like with the code there is a lot of in fighting between various interest groups. Often there are manufacturers opposing other manufacturers.
Very informative. Thanks for sharing post 16 & 17.
Its unclear how the NEMA rep, or other panel members fact check substantiation details, peer review statistical analysis, or employ laboratory research with proposals, but my interest remains concerned with reporting the liability exposure to my clients.
A lot of proposals are rejected by the code making panels because the technical substantiation is not adequate. I think that is the most common reason for proposal to be rejected. In this case, most of the negative votes were from panel members who agreed with the substantiation and the concept and their only disagreement was that this rule really should be in the product standards and not in the NEC.
How many actual electricians are on the CMP's?
This document you found and posted would clearly convince a jury otherwise.
Those documents would have no meaning in a court case...only the code scope would be looked at.
All of the IBEW, IEC and some of the NECA and IAEI members are or were electricians at one point in their careers.
It is available for free at the NFPA website and it is voluntary as far as being adopted.
Have you submitted any PIs to make that happen? In general the code is not written by the Code Making Panel members or the NFPA, but by the interested parties that submit Public Inputs for changes in the code.
Homeowners and DIYers are not the target audience for the NEC, any more than they are for the International Residential Code (IRC) which specifies how framing and foundation, floor, wall, and ceiling construction is to be done. They're both written for professionals with training and experience, and by necessity cannot be excessively simplified for untrained readers. There are plenty of DIY self-help books on the market with the goal of doing that.
The NEC can be accessed for free on the NFPA website by just getting a free NFPA account. It's as loaded and a complicated as it needs to be, just like the IRC spends 30 pages talking about floor joists. This is a little like saying that Einstein shouldn't have used tensor field calculus when coming up with General Relativity in order to make it intelligible by the every day reader. Can't be done.
The NEC by itself is merely a voluntary technical specification written by a private ANSI-accredited developer. Legal requirements are defined by State and Local governments, and most of them reference some edition of the NEC in whole or in part. There's nothing stopping any of them from adopting a less-loaded and less-complicated code for their jurisdiction by modifying how they reference the NEC and which parts they reference, should they come to believe it's in their best interests to do so.
seeing that with GFCI required on 30-50A exterior outlets, that are a cause of nuisance tripping of the certain AC units and subsequent TIA given to allow for UL to get a standard for the mfg. of these that "Will" work with GFCI. Until a Standard is made mfg. is not doing anything with making a product that will work. Seeing same on pool pumps now in NY since they required all these motors to be VSD.
Yes, until there is a product standard that specifies exactly what the NEC GFCI has to do, it is unlikely that a manufacturer will spend development money to make a change. If they spend time and money on something that they think will work, but it does not pass the performance requirements of the new standard, that is wasted time and money on their part.
A interesting 2023 decision by the DC court of appeals ended a decades long saga anyone is actually completely free to copy and distribute a PDF copy of the NEC (as soon as its adopted as law by reference), just like https://public.resource.org/ does. (They post them on archive.org).
Besides that the court also suggested your protected on at least four other possible grounds but did not need to explore them when the fair use settled the matter including the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
So if you're in the jurisdiction of the D.C. Circuit (District of Columbia) you can use this as a defense. Outside of D.C., you're still subject to getting Cease and Desist letters of the NFPA, I guess. I wonder why Public Resource hasn't relocated from Sonoma County (9th Circuit) to D.C. Probably because California Wine Country is a nicer place to live.
