This week's question is a continuation of the series about how work practices have evolved.

Many tasks that used to be considered routine and normal years ago are now rarely permitted.


During your career, have you ever installed/removed a bus plug/tap while:

Energized WITHOUT PPE
Energized WITH PPE
De- energized/electrically safe
I have never done that type of work

(you can select more than one answer)

Several times in years past I have installed bus plugs while energized and no PPE. I have only seen one blow up from an arc flash event and thank goodness I wasn't the one holding it. As the tech was pushing the bus plug in he disrupted a lot of metal dust that had built up on the busway and the arc blew the bus plug back out and a 5ft fireball surrounded the busway. Our tech was in a scissor lift and was also caught in the flame but was not ignited since he had cotton clothing on. He did have some burnt hair though! After that happened we only installed plugs when we could get an outage since in the early and mid 90's we did not have any PPE.

Energized WITHOUT PPE
In about 1995 I was shown how to do this by an electrician. I have removed and installed 5 more since then, last one in 2006.
Some of these were done in a Square D QMB-4846 panel with QMB Saflex units. These were known to have switch handles which would fail, and you would not be sure whether they were turned off or not. There were replaced for this reason. Be very careful if you deal with these.
Since arc flash training has become more common and LOTO training improved, all have been done with power off. There were no incidents.