States and municipalities requiring UL508

I was looking for a single documentation that shows which states and municipalities are requiring UL508 on the control panels. I have not found any sources that has these compilied. Does any know of a listing posted somewhere?

Craig

In massachusetts it seems to be up to the discretion of the municipalities electrical inspector. Some towns want it others don't and it isn't even consistent in the same town from job to job.

If someone posts the list, I'd love to see it as well.

We just make everything UL508 to avoid problems.

Marc

This will depend on your local AHJ (Authority Having Jurisdiction). Their interpretation of the NEC and comfort level with industrial machinery will influence this. Our local inspector is leary of European machinery, which comprises 95% of our process, so he required us to have a 3rd party label our entire machine installation, even though all control panels were UL-508-A labeled. A competitor in the next city (about 10 miles away) has installed similar machinery and was not required to label the control panels UL-508-A or have any additional inspections done.

I am curious, though. If we have a permanent Certificate of Occupancy, and are not doing any construction, do we really need to involve an inspector when installing additional machinery? We don't involve him when we run a new receptacle circuit or add a conveyor. Does anyone have any ideas on this? We are in North Carolina.

Thanks,
Chris

Same question as Chris. I didn't think that the local inspectors got involved if all you're doing is adding a machine to the floor.

And, on regs... a few years ago I was working at a company that bought a conveyor system that used about 100 small (1/4hp) VFDs. Turned out that if the VFD was in local mode, the E-Stop didn't. We found this out the hard way, of course, but fortunately nobody was injured. So the next day Manufacturing called Engineering, and I spent a couple of days looking to see if NH required any particular standards for machinery. Nope. Just NFPA 70... which of course has nothing much to do with the machine itself. And, to my surprise, OSHA had no explicit requirements for E-Stops either. NFPA 79 certainly does... but that code was not referenced by the state or federal gov't, and it was not part of the contract docs related to the machine purchase. So, we paid to refit the equipment with contactors ahead of the VFDs.

Are municipalities adding to their requirements? I'm not in facilities, but since I buy/build the equipment it would be good to know <g>.

Paul T

In my experience its totally up to how the inspector is feeling that day. Sometimes they will look at our panels and say, "oh, UL508, its good" or sometimes they will just ignore that and give us some problems anyway.

and that goes for any state the control is in, and we've had them all over the country.

Our UL inspector has indicated that the next update of NEC will require UL-508 on all industrial control panels. If that happens it means most of the country will shortly be requiring it, since most local jurisdictions require NEC compliance as part of their local codes.

Tom Jenkins said:

Our UL inspector has indicated that the next update of NEC will require UL-508 on all industrial control panels. If that happens it means most of the country will shortly be requiring it, since most local jurisdictions require NEC compliance as part of their local codes.

Click to expand...

This is already in the 2005 NEC in the new Article 409. Although not specifically mentioning UL, it calls for equipment to be labeled by a NRTL, Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory. UL fits that requirement, as does ETL, CSA, ENTELA, FM and a host of other small testing labs springing up to meet the upcoming demand. Not every state has adopted the 2005 NEC however, that is done within each State's building code. I am in California and we are still using the 2002 NEC (although I have heard of individual AHJs now adding requirements found only in the 2005). Other states are still using the 1999 code. If you contact the NFPA I think they they publish a list showing which states have adopted which version of the code.

Somewhere on here is a thread where I provided that OSHA references NFPA 70 (NEC) and NFPA 79 in CR 29. I will try to find the information again.

In the process of looking I did find that you can now preview NFPA books online, go to this link http://www.nfpa.org/aboutthecodes/list_of_codes_and_standards.asp
and select the code book you want to preview.

Sorry to dig up an old thread but was looking for this information as well.

I just looked through NEC 2017 article 409 and I didn't see anything about requiring a NRTL.

Is there anywhere in the NEC/NFPA 70 / 70E / 79 the specifically states components must be UL or NRTL approved?