ESMO 2019 - Grounding for Personal Protection

A brief history of Temporary Protective Grounding is presented, highlighting the evolution of the practice and recent OSHA guidelines that impact working practices and product. Through simple circuit analysis, the impact of fault current on a lineman with and without adequate protective grounding will be demonstrated. This analysis also allows one to understand the potential hazardous impact to the worker when inadequate ground sets are employed or when adequate ground sets are improperly attached. Will discuss the construction of ground sets and how the component choices and assembly are critical to the performance of ground sets, emphasizing the importance of this through videos of ground sets being tested at fault current levels. These videos clearly illustrate the extreme energy associated with fault currents and the resultant potential destruction. The testing and maintenance of ground sets will be discussed. Equipotential grounding will be presented, with detail about the products needed to achieve an equipotential zone for the lineman. The benefit of equipotential grounding will be demonstrated using a Ground Set Simulator.