favour of lifting the total ban on putting any switch<\/a>, circuit or fuse into mains power earthing systems at the transmission side of house switchboards. As things stand, that would be lifted this November.<\/p>\nThe agency said after concerns were raised it sought an independent review which in April confirmed its technical advice was \u201ctechnically sound and justified\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe changes support modern energy systems, including renewable generation, battery storage, backup power, and electric vehicle charging, and enable safer, more resilient electricity supply,\u201d WorkSafe said on Thursday in a statement.<\/p>\n
Solar no-no<\/p>\n
Glenn Harvey, head of the Solar Association, said the change would instead add new dangers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019ve got the neutral broken, and the phase is live, it\u2019s coming into your house, and it can\u2019t go back out because there\u2019s a failed switch open and it electrifies all your electrical appliances, and your roof, and everything, it\u2019s pretty dangerous, eh,\u201d Harvey said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that\u2019s why the Aussies don\u2019t accept it. They just think that there\u2019s a fundamental core \u2013 you need to have that earth, that clean earth.\u201d<\/p>\n
New Zealand, with its many steel-roofed homes, made that imperative on a clean earth yet more important, he said.<\/p>\n
Electricians who installed solar panels in homes were telling him New Zealand should not go its own way on the PEN when otherwise it had a joint solar standard with Australia, Harvey said.<\/p>\n
Electrical inspectors came out strongly against the change months ago.<\/p>\n
WorkSafe responded with April\u2019s independent report and what it said would be careful guidelines.<\/p>\n
\u2018Wrong-side failure\u2019<\/p>\n
But on Friday, Engineering New Zealand chief executive Dr Richard Templer upped the ante.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are very concerned that from the middle of November, people could start switching the protective earth neutral.\u201d<\/p>\n
He released a letter he sent last month to Energy Minister Simeon Brown calling for the urgent reinstatement of the switch prohibition.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt creates a new wrong-side failure mode that did not exist before,\u201d the letter said.<\/p>\n
Every electrical expert they had talked to considered lifting the ban \u201cunnecessary and inherently unsafe because of the risk of serious injury or death\u201d, Templer said.<\/p>\n
There were other safe ways of achieving the same things around solar and EV power.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are calling for the urgent reinstatement of the prohibitions in the standard before somebody suffers significant harm.\u201d<\/p>\n
The other worry was how the country got to this point \u2013 the critics say WorkSafe didn\u2019t get enough expert input. The agency rejects that.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had a lot of conversations with WorkSafe,\u201d Templer told RNZ.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve done our absolute best to try and convince them that this is an unsafe thing … that\u2019s what\u2019s been going on for months.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown said he had sought advice from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.<\/p>\n
Templer said Brown told them the issue was being sent back to officials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"M\u00fcller explained to RNZ how he simulated at home inserting a switch in what is called the \u201cprotective…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[78777,138,115093,8276,5658,111,139,69,31341,21037,35968,209666,32261,61,202480,283953,283954,102],"class_list":["post-576745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-78777","tag-business","tag-electrical","tag-experiment","tag-experts","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pennington","tag-phil","tag-sends","tag-soontobe","tag-switch","tag-to","tag-toaster","tag-unbanned","tag-volts","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}