By Gregory Obenchain, PE, Senior Manager, Electric Operations & Engineering, American Public Power Association
Safety is job one for public power utilities, who take strides every day to keep their employees and their customers safe. While the trainings, policies, tracking, and debriefs all play an important role in maintaining safety, these items stem from a source: the National Electrical Safety Code, or NESC. The NESC guidelines inform our Safety Manual, align with aspects of our eSafety Tracker, and more.
The NESC is a set of guidelines that inform how everyone who is involved with the installation, operation, and maintenance of electric supply, communication lines, and associated equipment can do so in a way that safeguards utility workers and the public. It’s the foundation for electric utility construction standards and engineering guidelines, regardless of the size the NESC impacts the cost to design, build, maintain and operate electric utility infrastructure across the U.S.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is responsible for overseeing, maintaining, and publishing the NESC. The NESC is an accredited American National Standards Institute (ANSI) consensus-based national standard. Participants representing electric utilities, communication companies, and other stakeholders make up the committees that develop the requirements in the NESC. Since the NESC affects every aspect of an electric utility system, input from public power systems of all sizes is necessary to ensure that the requirements adhere to public power safety standards and are economically feasible. The American Public Power Association is proud to serve as the conduit for our members to participate in and provide input into the revision process.
The NESC gets officially updated every five years, but the activities for the revisions begin almost as soon as the previous guidelines get released. That means while the next version of the code will be released in 2028, we are already about halfway through the official revision cycle.
Members involved in the update process so far have served on our central Public Power Standards Representatives Task Force in addition to being involved with various NESC subcommittees focused on areas such as electric supply stations, clearances, and work rules. Task force members have weighed in on member change proposals in a series of meetings and discussions throughout 2024. Members can view the materials from these meetings on our National Electrical Safety Code and Public Power webpage.
In July 2025, IEEE will release the pre-print, which will be open for comment through March 2026. Just as with the change proposals, members of the PPSRT will help collect and cull through comments from the public power community to help work through how and where comments might best be directed to IEEE.
Electric utilities representatives consisting of investor-owned, electric cooperatives, and public power utilities historically have been the majority stakeholders weighing in on the revisions. However, only by actively participating will that continue to be the case. Given the vast differences amongst the types of electric utilities, it is extremely important that public power utilities not only maintain, but increase, their participation to strengthen their voice to ensure that the NESC’s requirements do not adversely affect public power utility customers.
APPA is proud to support and enable our members to participate in the NESC. Contact Gregory Obenchain to learn more about the NESC, the revision cycle, or opportunities on how to get directly or indirectly involved.
