Alwayslearningelec
Senior Member
- Location
- NJ
- Occupation
- Estimator
What differentiates or determines the difference life Safety circuit from emergency circuits ? Thanks.
Life Safety vs EM
- Thread starter Alwayslearningelec
- Start date
lordofthisworld
Senior Member
- Location
- Massachusetts
Well u can't run life safety circuits in the same raceway as normal power but u can run emergency (stand-by and optional) circuits with normal circuits. Also, u cant have life safety circuits in the same enclosures as normal power but u can have normal power circuits in the same enclosures with standby and optional emergency circuits. If u look at A700 which deals with life safety circuits, A701 which deals with standby systems, and A702 which deals with optional emergency circuits, these articles will let u know the differences between the circuits.
- Location
- Illinois
- Occupation
- retired electrician
The word emergency should never be used to refer to Article 702 Optional Standby System as that creates confusion with Article 700 Emergency Systems. Article 701 is Legally Required Standby Systems.
The application of Articles 700 and 701 is triggered by rules in the building and life safety codes.
Actually "Life Safety" is a 517 system, it is pretty much aligned with 700 but the term "Life Safety Branch" stands alone.
ron
Senior Member
- Location
- New York, 40.7514,-73.9925
If you are trying to differentiate between loads that are Article 700 Emergency or Article 701 Legally Required Standby, look to your adopted building code. For example, if your adopted building code happened to be the IBC 2024, you look in Chapter 27 and anywhere it says Emergency Power System, you look at Article 700 of the NEC. If the IBC Chapter 27 says Standby Power System, you look at Article 701 of the NEC.
CHAPTER 27 ELECTRICAL - 2024 INTERNATIONAL BUILDING CODE (IBC)
ICC Digital Codes is the largest provider of model codes, custom codes and standards used worldwide to construct safe, sustainable, affordable and resilient structures.
codes.iccsafe.org
Spent my last ten working years as an electrician in a large hospital. I asked several times about the emergency power / life safety breakdowns but never received any. The hospital purchased special cell phones that would only work within two blocks of the hospital for hundreds of nurses that worked there. Was confusing on every no ER,ICU, OR'S or NICU units where to pull 120 volt power from for charging stations.Was close to 50/50 EM or normal power. Older section of hospital had four natural gas generators that were used maybe 6 times every summer to peak shave 2 or 3 MWatts. Had to turn on steam chillers & shutdown electric chillers that ran on motors. Forget how many levels the emergency generators had buy while one was down for repairs & peak shaving a gen set went down and emergency power that was operating AHCU units transferred thier power to normal Power. Great thing all of the AHCU fans were on VFD'S that performed flawless flying starts.