Why Adopt NFPA 70B: A Standard for Electrical Equipment Maintenance?

Maintaining electrical equipment on our solar and storage sites is about maximizing uptime while keeping maintenance costs down, ultimately optimizing the entire lifecycle of our projects. A well-structured Electrical Maintenance Program (EMP) based on NFPA 70B offers a systematic approach to achieving this goal. The standard provides a framework that ensures equipment is maintained by qualified technicians, properly documented, and aligned with site-specific safety and operational requirements. Implementing these standards can help reduce operating costs, extend equipment life, and enhance workplace safety.

You can think about our solar and storage sites like any other big asset (like a home, building, or even a vehicle) – if you skip regular maintenance activities for long enough, you’re bound to have trouble. That’s where a solid EMP comes in, and NFPA 70B is your roadmap to getting it right consistently. 

Tune into the clip or read the transcript below from Brian Mehalic from the NFPA 70B: A New Standard for Electrical Equipment Maintenance course. 

Why would you want to adopt NFPA 70B as a basis for your electrical maintenance program (EMP) and planning?

Well, a proper EMP is going to be scalable. The foundation is going to be something you can build on so that you can scale up and expand your operations and your maintenance activities. 

When we follow a proper EMP, we’re going to increase system uptime. 

We’re going to ensure that equipment lasts as long as it can in its proper operating condition. This reduces overall costs. 

It protects people and it protects companies in investments in these systems. 

What we’re trying to do here is minimize the total operating cost of an electrical system over its lifetime. That becomes a combination of two factors. If we look at our graph, on the right hand side here, we get our minimum cost when we have the low combination of the lowest EPM cost, plus the cost of equipment repair and replacement. That’s going to give us our safest, most effectively operating system over time. 

We don’t want to overspend and we’ll get into these details throughout the course. 

What activities do we do? 

Obviously there’s the gold, silver, bronze approach. 

What kind of level of maintenance are we doing? 

Can we do everything?

Sure. We could.

Can we afford to do everything? 

Probably not. That’s not going to be in the budget. 

There’s different levels that are going to be applied here. Balancing that out is what leads to an efficient and effective EMP. 

Ready to learn the ins and outs of creating your own EMP? Enroll in the NFPA 70B: A New Standard for Electrical Equipment Maintenance course.