North american electrical installation requirements

Quality Review. Standards, Compliance, and Enforcement Bulletin Archive. You may be trying to access this site from a secured browser on the server. Please enable scripts and reload this page. Turn on more accessible mode. Turn off more accessible mode. Skip Ribbon Commands. Electrical equipment must carry the official mark or label of an accredited certifying agency, which indicates that the product has been independently assessed for safety.

Equipment nameplates provide a brief summary of the characteristics of the equipment. For electrical equipment intended to be used in classified areas known as hazardous locations , the information on markings and nameplates is critical.

Such information for equipment used in hazardous locations is intended to enable:. Unclear markings may lead to the incorrect piece of equipment being purchased, installed and inspected for the application and might cause a catastrophic loss. The intention of both systems is the same — to classify hazardous locations in such a way that the safety of the equipment for use in such locations can be determined.

Machine and panel builders serving the North American market should consider these four steps:. Some North American electrical standards have been evolving to harmonize with global standards for more than a decade. However, much work remains as the two sets of standards still have a number of differences.

The three standards that every machine or panel builder should be familiar with include:. There is no exact equivalent European counterpart to UL A. The Allen-Bradley Bulletin G molded case circuit breakers are UL-listed as current limiting and can help engineers achieve a higher short-circuit rating in the control panel. Differences exist, such as grounding, voltage and protection requirements.