Street Lighting Design - Florida

[NMCB13]

I purchased a new home back in 2013, located in a gated community in Indian River County. The street lights were installed by an electrical contractor several years ago. The Builder is still selling homes here trying to close out the project. The problem is that it is costing the HOA 6K each year to repair and maintain the street lights. They are off more that they are on! I spoke to the EC who is the only contractor that will work on the lighting system. He has stated that some of the wiring was found to be burned up, and fixture ballasts are over heating and failing. As it turns out there is NO overcurrent protection on the lighting feeders and are fed from multiple sources from FP&L transformers. The HOA is being charged a flat fee from FP&L for the operation of the street lights. I have looked for and did not find any supplemental protection for the street light feeders or for the branch circuit wiring going to the fixtures. I opened three hand holes located at the base of the pole. I found that there is only two feeders (120 volt phase conductor and a neutral) direct buried single conductor cable. There is no fusing at the base and standard wire nuts connecting an aluminum wire to a copper wire. I also noticed that (this is great) no EGC installed either with the feeders or the branch circuit wiring to the fixture.! The contractor installed two single conductor aluminum feeders to service the street lights. I think the AWG is No. 8 or # 6.
I went to the building department to review the drawings on file, which there were none on file;l nor was any inspection permits for the street lights were on file.

Question, In a gated HOA community what design standards (including the NEC) should be used to design the street light system? Should this be a requirement of the County to adopt standards?

This installation is chock filled with NEC violations! Also a potential Hazard !

Any assistance or guidance will be appreciated.

 

[GoldDigger]

First impression: Gated community or not, this is not a controlled industrial environment and the street lights (UNLESS perhaps if operated directly by POCO) will be fixed wiring subject to the NEC.
How the county chooses to apply permitting and inspection rules in such a community is a separate issue, but whoever did the installation would still be bound by the NEC IF the county, state, or any other enclosing jurisdiction has adopted the NEC.

 

[Iron_Ben]

When I worked for the POCO we wired street lights with little or no over current protection. We did however put all the conductors in pipe, which was a good thing. It's contradictory to me that FP&L charges the HOA a flat fee, and that the HOA spends $6,000 a year to maintain the system. The first tells me that the lights are owned by FP&L and unmetered, while the second tells me the HOA owns them. We owned and maintained street lighting in residential subdivisions in almost every case. I can only think of one exception. In that instance, the HOA would ask us every couple of years to take it over and our answer was always "no thanks". We had no interest in inheriting a poorly designed and installed system, and acquiring somebody else's headache.

 

[mgookin]

I spent 20 years in a building department in Florida and have considerable experience with FPL's lease light program.

As a public utility they are exempt from code and permitting with respect to their power generation, distribution and street lighting. (they need a building permit to build an office building and have to follow code on that). If they own the poles, code does not apply.

You need to find out if you're paying for energy only or energy and lamping. Search online for the FPL Lease Light Tariff and you'll have more information than you need.

Your complaint about a 2-wire system is shared by many. Often it's a 480V 2 wire which means municipalities can't take them back from FPL and install LED because there's no neutral.

When you report outages do they fix them? Or are they telling you that the HOA has to have them fixed?