As most of you will be aware, this is a Technical Report providing guidance for testing of LV assemblies (enclosures) under conditions of arcing due to internal fault. We have been asked many times if we comply with this, on the basis that our products will then be "arc fault tested" or even "arc fault certified". The previous (2008) and current (2014) versions of this TR contain the following:-
"The recommendations of this report are not acceptable in the USA, nor in Canada, nor in the United Kingdom�
On that basis (being UK based) we have so far resisted such tests as being focussed on the wrong thing and of limited use. Most of continental Europe seems to accept it and the large multi-nationals are making a big thing of this. Many end users, even UK based ones, are making it a requirement based on the marketing etc. Should we just do some testing, get the "certificate" (actually a test report of course) and therefore be able to bid for more jobs? Does anyone have a better way of pointing people away from such dubious tests? (By dubious I mean relating what was tested to the reality of what is built and the nature of the fault when one occurs).
Cheers,
Roger Greenwood