SR 48 hot swapping

Bear with me people but I try to tell my boss that just pulling a dimmer with the breakers and the main power still on to work on a circuit is probably a bad idea. I’ve heard rumors about them being hot disconnect friendly but that just doesn’t seem right. I think about it the same as when you disconnect a fixture under live load. You can, but that doesn’t mean you should because of arc flash and such. Am I correct? Can someone please put it in simple English for them? They’re D20s if that makes a difference.

  • In the USA, NFPA 70E is the standard that covers safety when working with power. It has very specific requirements for exposing the buss bars with 120/208V and several 100A, all that arc flash and such. The short story is don't! Your boss will likely hate the requirements for PPE, training and record keeping for working with exposed hot copper.

    I believe the Sensor and modules are hot swap-able as far as damage to the equipment goes. Damage to humans is another story! 

    70E also contains methods for "lock out, tag out" for working on individual circuits. Main power stays on, but the circuit breaker gets a pad lock. ETC has special clips for their modules. By comparison this is vastly cheaper and safer than yanking modules. 

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