Electricity Today T&D Magazine

Removing hazards caused from in-vehicle computing

BY SCOTT BALL, Motion Computing

No utility company would send a worker out in a truck with a known safety defect. North American electric utilities may not realize, however, that by failing to ensure that computing devices are used safely within their vehicles, management could be putting their employees and the public at risk. Even worse, if an accident was to occur, the utility could be held liable. Access to mobile computing is now the rule rather than the exception. The latest generation of mobile-friendly applications has made computing devices essential for connecting...

Verifying the functionality and integrity of a grounding system is critical to maintaining a safe workspace. Unfortunately, the tests used to achieve this goal, as well as the standards used to assess them, have required a specialized skillset, often leaving these tests done improperly or not at all. Now, with the industry progressing toward guided testing, new solutions make it possible for these tests to be performed correctly and accurately with limited test-specific training. Ultimately, this makes the difficulty of testing a ground grid similar to that of testing a transformer or circuit breaker. This article explains the purpose and...