Why green technology demands a new approach to electrical safety

As buildings generate, store and consume electricity in increasingly complex ways, Richard Winter, Director at matt:e, explains why electrical safety must evolve alongside them.

The rush to build the green economy is forcing a new series of conversations about electrical safety. The rapid growth of electric vehicle charging, for example, brought the risks associated with a broken PEN conductor into much sharper focus.

This is understandable. An electric vehicle is a large conductive object, often charged outdoors, while the person using it is standing in contact with the general mass of Earth. If a fault within a PME supply causes the vehicle body to rise to a dangerous voltage, the consequences could be extremely serious. PEN fault protection has therefore become an established consideration with EV charging equipment.

But this is only the beginning of the electrical safety challenge created by electrification in the green economy. As buildings increasingly generate, store and consume electricity in different ways, we need to think beyond protecting individual technologies and towards maintaining visibility of the electrical installation as a whole.

Commercial buildings, residential developments and public infrastructure are increasingly incorporating solar PV, battery storage and heat pumps alongside EV charging. Electricity may now be generated, stored, consumed and exported at different points within the same installation.

The result is a much more dynamic electrical environment. Load, voltage and phase balance can change considerably throughout the day depending on solar generation, EV charging, battery operation and other large electrical loads. These changing conditions can affect the safety, reliability, and operational life of connected equipment.

This changing environment also introduces risks beyond those associated with individual technologies. A broken PEN conductor is not the only condition capable of creating a risk. Loss of neutral, dangerous voltage on a protective conductor, abnormal line-to-neutral voltage and phase imbalance can all affect the safety and reliability of an installation. These conditions may originate on the public electricity network, but faults can also develop within the building itself, through loose, damaged or deteriorating connections at switchboards, distribution boards or elsewhere in the supply path. 

For electrical contractors, it is now not enough to establish that an installation is safe when it is commissioned. There is a growing urgency to understand how risks emerge when technologies operate together and conditions change. 

Continuous monitoring provides an important part of that visibility. Rather than focusing only on the protection of an individual device, it can provide an ongoing view of electrical conditions across the installation, helping identify abnormal or developing conditions as they occur.

This becomes particularly relevant when considering the limitations of point-in-time testing.

Commissioning remains fundamental, but it represents the conditions present at a particular moment. Solar generation may be low on the day an installation is commissioned, EV chargers may not all be operating simultaneously, batteries may be idle and the building's normal loads may be very different from those experienced during peak operation.

Periodic inspection provides another essential snapshot, but months or years may pass between inspections. A developing fault or abnormal electrical condition could emerge during that period without being present during the previous inspection.

If the electrical environment is changing continuously, then our ability to monitor it should not be limited to the moments when an engineer is testing it.

EV charging brought broken PEN conductor protection to the forefront. The next step is to move beyond device-level protection, recognising that, in an increasingly electrified world, continuous monitoring of the wider electrical installation is becoming the key to maintaining electrical safety.