Our aim is to be the duty holders partner of choice where there is a need to demonstrate compliance in respect to Power Earthing Systems and Lightning Protection Systems. 

The term duty holder applies to any person(s) in so far as they are required to comply with the Electricity at Work Regulations (1989) where it may be applicable to matters within that person(s) control. 

In this respect an electrical premises may have a number of duty holders, or even a hierarchy of ‘principle’ duty holders, and underlying duty holders. 

Our service provision is increasingly focused on working directly with duty holders in order to perform our own site audits, or indeed in response to the actions arising from site audits undertaken by others (the HSE for example).  

We are focused on demonstrating compliance with national standard and industry standards (approved codes of practice) such that the duty holders’ obligations under law are satisfied. Duty holders are, by law, required to comply with: 

1. The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 (HASAWA) 

2. The Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 (EAWR) 

3. The Electricity Safety, Quality and Continuity Regulations (ESQCR) 2002

The above regulations are statutory instruments, enforceable by law. Underlying these instruments is a suite of industry specific Approved Codes of Practice (ACOPS). Whilst ACOPS do not constitute statutory instruments (the law); nonetheless the documents represent ‘best practice’ within an industry. Demonstrating compliance with ACOPS, can in turn be used to demonstrate compliance with the broader statutory instruments. The main approved codes of practice applicable to our services provision are as follows: 

1. BSEN 50522: 2010 Earthing of power installations exceeding 1kV a.c.

2. BS 7430:2011+A1:2015 Code of practice for protective earthing of electrical installations. 

3. ENA Technical Specification 41/24: Guidelines for the Design, Installation, Testing and Maintenance of Main Earthing Systems in Substations.

4. ENA Engineering Recommendation S34: A Guideline for Assessing the Rise of Earth Potential at Substation Site. 

5. BSEN 62305 Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 – Protection against Lightning. 

6. BS 7671 – Requirements for Electrical Installations (IET Wiring Regulations). 

There are many other industry specific documents our audits and recommendations can take cognisance of. 

Our in-house team can provide the site wide audits for Substation Power Earthing Systems and Lightning Protection Systems. This includes survey, inspection, testing, risk assessment and formal reporting. Furthermore we can provide the subsequent remedial actions in order to allow duty holders to demonstrate compliance with statuary regulations and ACOPS.   

Additional note on legislation in relation to Substation (HV/LV) Earthing (ref: BS 7430 section A.2) 

The Electricity Supply Regulations (replaced by The Electricity Safety, Quality and Continuity Regulations) required that where in a substation the HV equipment earth and the LV neutral earth were common, that the resistance to earth has to not exceed 1 Ω. For most substations this value was provided by the un-insulated protective sheaths of the older types of cables in use and was normally sufficient to lower the impedance of these cable sheaths to ensure sufficiently low earth potential rise (EPR) for general combination of HV and LV earth systems even with very high earth-fault current. However this simple requirement is no longer adequate. 

Regulation 8(2) of The ESQCR requires that in respect of any high-voltage installation, the earthing has to be designed, installed and maintained so as to prevent danger in any low-voltage network occurring as a result of any fault in the high-voltage network. 

The advice in the Guidance in the ESQCR is:

Duty holders must ensure that persons are not at risk of danger from low voltage networks due to the rise in potential of the earthing system caused by the release of earth fault current from the high voltage system. In practice duty holders will either interconnect the earthing conductors connected to high voltage equipment and those connected to low voltage system where the combined resistance to earth is very low or alternatively operate separate earth electrodes in which case the effect of overlapping resistance areas should be minimal.