Electricians Allowed To Upgrade Incoming Fuse

- Coming up on this week's news, electricians from a major energy company are being allowed to upgrade the incoming fuse by National Grid. A contractor who charged a woman 182 pounds to upgrade a fire detector is found guilty of fraud, and Siemens unveils what's being dubbed a circuit breaker from the future. Welcome to "Electrical News Weekly" in association with Solar Trade Sales. Your easy one-stop shop for all things solar, whether you're listening in the van, onsite, or down at the wholesale counter, I'm Joe Robinson, and I've been through the best of the electrical industry news to save you the trouble. And this week's challenge word competition is supported by the good people at Compleo, the complete solution for EV charge point installers. And if you think you've spotted the two words that I've been challenged to slip into this week's show, comment with it below for the chance to win a prize. Electricians working for the energy company, Octopus, are to be allowed to change the fuse for a house when they're installing an EV charger, a heat pump, or other renewable devices. These clean technologies typically require more current at certain times and consequently, the fuse needs to be upgraded. This work is usually done by the local distribution network operator, or DNO. National Grid Electricity Distribution agreed to the arrangement in a bid to clear the mounting backlog of requests for income upgrades. Currently we at eFIXX are seeing delays of up to 10 weeks in getting the work done. Now electricians can do the instal and the upgrade at the same visit. Additionally, National Grid has assessed the models of heat pumps used by Octopus Energy and pre-approved them for connection to its network. This could save up to five weeks delay. Previously checks would've been made to ensure that the local grid could accommodate the extra power needed to run the pumps. However, the deal has raised fears among independent contractors that it gifts a big competitive advantage to Octopus. They say it distorts the market for renewables, as they won't be able to compete on price and service levels. Gordon discussed this issue with electricians in a recent live stream. I've put the link to that in the show notes. The background to all this is of course, the soaring demand for renewable technologies. In fact, National Grid says it has seen the number of electric vehicle chargers installed on its network increased by eight times over the last five years. In the courts this week, a man in Ireland has been fined for illegally undertaking cabling works while not on the Republic of Ireland's register of electrical contractors. Longford District Council heard that Brian Farrell falsely portrayed himself as a registered electrical contractor and carried out a substandard instal. In Ireland you must be on the safe electric register to carry out wiring work. A probe of his installation found numerous breaches of the wiring regs, the cabling of his main tails and a solar panel installation were all undersized. He provided no isolation for inaccessible sockets. Lighting circuits were wired with only a foot of oversized cabling. They were also overpopulated and not wired to ever function. Some lighting and socket circuits were wired from a bedroom socket below and he issued no certificate of compliance for the works. Farrell had apparently contacted the householder on Facebook after the letter put up a post looking for a builder, he asked that she keep him in mind for the electrical works. Judge Bernadette Owens said that the work was a very serious matter and in the circumstances imposed criminal convictions as well as fines totaling 2,400 pounds. Meanwhile, here in the UK, an electrician who installed an unnecessary smoke alarm for a homeowner at a cost of 182 pounds has admitted a charge of fraud. Martin Haggerty of Dunfermline in Scotland, was helping to instal a kitchen at a property in Greenlaw when he told the owner that their smoke alarm was not up to standard and that he could instal a new one. He initially asked for an upfront payment of 140 pounds. Later, he requested a further 42 pounds saying that the price had gone up. But Jedburgh Court heard he kept making excuses for delaying the replacement, and when he failed to complete the work, the police were called in. Haggerty, who has a previous conviction for fraud, represented himself in court. He was fined a total of 790 pounds and ordered to pay his victim 182 pounds compensation. In other news, professional installers are risking their lives every day by not following basic safety procedures to check whether a circuit is energised before starting work. That's according to new research carried out by Super Rod. The company surveyed 2044 electricians about their safety habits and the results says the company show that we have a long way to go to eliminate daily dangers in our working lives. Super Rod says there have been no fewer than 13 fatalities and 220 serious injuries, many of which could have been avoided if safe isolation was in practise. The survey shows that 90% of contractors now carry a lockout kit, but the downside is that 28% said they rarely or never use it to isolate the electrical supply they're working on. Instead of using a lockout kit, installers have devised many weird and wonderful ways to ensure their safety. These include using homemade signage and tape to verbally telling other trades what they're working on. Worryingly, 2% of respondents said that they took absolutely no precautions at all. The Super Rod researchers asked specifically why installers don't use their lockout kit. A third said they worked alone, so they didn't need to use it. One in 10 think they're only going to be a minute or two with a power isolated, 6% said that they didn't use a lockout kit because their employer didn't provide them with one, while one in 20 said that they were too much hassle. Others felt that they were too expensive. Industrial and commercial contractors are twice as likely to follow safe isolation procedures than their residential counterparts. Super Rod point to the case of Michael Adamson as an example of what can go wrong. Experienced electrician Adamson died in 2005 when he cut a cable marked not in use. However, the cable was in fact connected to a distribution board and was not safely isolated. Super Rod boss, Malcolm Duncan, says that despite cases like this, there is still a reluctance in many to change their daily working practises. He believes we can and must do better than this. Duncan says that while there has been progress and more people now have the right kit, and better understanding of safe isolation, his ambition is to create a culture where safe working is the norm. As part of this, several heavyweights of the electrical industry came together at TIS headquarters in Leeds to thrush out what more can be done, including representatives of the IET, the ECA, NAPIT, the NIC, Electrical Safety First, Super Rod, as well as those on the front line of installation, and our very own lost to heavyweight, Gary Hayers, who despite looking as felt as I've ever seen him, still looks as though he is nursing a bunion in the picture our video viewers can see right now. That looks like a room of people that are gonna make positive change and get things done to me. TIS are already playing their part by supporting a free training package that we've made on the subject of safe isolation. So if you feel the need for a refresher, then check it out, and I'll leave a link in the show notes. In product news, Siemens has unveiled a circuit breaker which industry observers say represents the future of the technology. The SENTRON is fundamentally different from standard breakers because it uses purely electronic switching rather than electromechanical tripping. If a fault occurs, the circuit is interrupted by solid state switching. This happens silently and instantly. In fact, it's a thousand times faster than standard breakers. It also has no contacts to wear down, no matter how many times it switches. Once it trips the breaker makes a decision whether to trip a mechanical isolating contact further along the circuit. The SENTRON can also test its own RCD capability regularly without any need for the householder to do it. The boss of Siemens Electrical Products Division, Andreas Matthe, boasted that for the first time in the history of circuit protection, it is now possible to use several different functionalities in one device. The clever SENTRON also has other capabilities. You can reconfigure to a change of circuit using an app on your phone. In fact, you can change its rated current, its tripping limits or any other behaviour. You could, for example, programme it to ignore certain peaks of high in rush currents. This means you can design a circuit with a lower rated current. This would be useful and economic for circuits with brief in rush peak, such as LED lights. You can also monitor the breaker and switch it remotely, as well as connect it to building management systems. Told you it was clever. We'd be interested in hearing what you think about that one. Absolute genius, and the device of the future or something from a vaping induced nightmare. Let us know in the comments below. Finally, a reminder that we are in the market for your stories, your projects, and your recommendations as we'd like to share them with the wider eFIXX community. In March, we're focusing on commercial EV charging heat pumps and ventilation. So send us pictures of your instals, or let us know if you've come across any new kit that's making your job easier. And just before we get to your favourite bit of the show where I reveal last week's challenge words and winners, we want to thank our premium partners. We couldn't make the news without you. First up, they're the people who created the Swiss Army knife of solar inverters along with all weather batteries, very much the Boy Scouts of the solar industry. It's Sunsynk and testing, testing, one, two, testing. If you've got something you need to measure or a piece of test equipment to calibrate, from multimeters to power quality analyzers, then it can only be Test Instrument Solutions. 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We really appreciate your ongoing support for the news. If you think you know the words that I've smuggled into this week's show, pop your guests into the comments. We'll take all the correct guesses and select one at random to be a winner of an eFIXX goodie bag prize. Answers submitted after about lunchtime on the Thursday after release will not be entered into the draw. Now let's reveal the winners of last week's challenge word competition, supported by Compleo, the complete solution for EV charge point installers. Last week's words were monstrous and gruesome. And once again, you all made my job really easy this week as only one person got both right across all platforms and that was Edward Bretherton. So very well done to you, Edward. You are clearly an observational genius amongst your peers. Make sure you click the get involved link in the show notes to claim your prize. Also, I think a special mention of one or two people needs to be made here, particularly RF Solutions, for their active engagement in their story last week. Although it seems calling them boffins was a misstep on our part. They prefer to be called cool kids apparently. So we'll keep that in mind. Dieseldragon6756 who made me laugh with his excellent punning, and Olly7673, who's curious about our mystery team member script writer, Ray, you will indeed have seen his Clooney-esque face if you've watched the news very carefully, or tuned into an episode of eFIXX TV a while back. Maybe we should get him on one week as a guest. What do you think? Until then, thanks for listening to this episode of "Electrical News Weekly" in association with Solar Trade Sales. Your easy one stop shop for all things solar. Make sure you subscribe to receive the next update. Thanks for listening, and until next time, have a great week, stay safe out there. And remember, there's no such thing as a top calibrated arm.