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Grounding & Protection



Electric Utility System Standards

How Ontario regulation can improve electrical safety BY BILL KHASHFE, London Hydro According to an Ontario Electrical Safety Report, 35 percent of the province’s electrical-related fatalities in the past 10 years were attributed to power-line contact. Equipment specifications and electric utility...

Utility Safety Standards


Obsoleting The Absence Of Voltage Test?

For more than a decade, thousands of users have deployed Permanent Electrical Safety Devices (PESDs) to reduce the risks in isolating electrical energy. This elegantly simple innovation increases the probability that workers are only exposed to ‘zero voltage’ when doing an absence of voltage...

How Dangerous is Linemen Work?

Many occupations pose risks to workers, but few match the dangers that linemen face daily. Linemen play a critical role in maintaining and restoring the power grid, often working in extreme weather conditions, at significant heights, and around high-voltage electrical systems. Their work is...

Safety Best Practices


Distracted Driving Equals Disaster

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...

The End of the Road for Transmission Incentives

In a significant shift, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has decided to abandon its transmission incentives policy, particularly the construction work in progress (CWIP) incentives. This decision marks a pivotal change in how transmission projects are financed and regulated,...

Lineman Safety

Safety Reports for Utility Workers

Protecting utility workers with documented reporting

BY MIKE DOHERTY, PowerTel Utilities Contractors Limited

Within the lineman trade, accountabilities for the documentation of various inspections, job safety analyses (JSAs), audits, safe work practices (SPGs), qualifications, safety meetings, supervisor’s crew visits, safety manager and senior management inspections, and compliance reporting are some examples of the significant differences between decades ago and expectations for high-end crews in today’s due-diligent workplaces.

There are significant challenges within the lineman...

Lineman Safety Articles