ELCI Equipment Earth Leakage Circuit Interrupter wiring system

DOT•PLUG Breakaway Wiring System for Roadway Lighting Systems
A Safer & More Economical Lighting System

ELCI
Safety concerns have been raised over the last decade over the Electrical Shock Hazards that have been associated with municipal and roadway lighting systems. Insulation breakdown from aging infrastructure has been documented from coast to coast (see these articles for reference), along with missing access covers, animal penetration, wind damage, water damage, and salt corrosion. Implementing the use of an ELCI will help eliminate these hazards and reduce the liability associated.

ELCI stands for "Equipment (sometimes "Earth") Leakage Circuit Interrupter", and is a device intended to mitigate ground fault leakage specifically for the protection of equipment. A "GFCI" (Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter) is essentially the same as an "ELCI", but for the most part differ in trip threshold of leakage current and/or circuit voltage. A "GFCI" indicates that "Personnel" protection is being provided. This calls for a trip threshold of 4 to 6 mA with a maximum response time of 25ms and circuit voltage from any single current carrying conductor to Ground cannot exceed 150V. Thus, even if a 4 to 6 mA trip threshold is employed, on a 480V circuit, or even a 240V elevated (L1, N), providing personnel protection is not feasible. In order to provide personnel the greatest level of protection given circuit criteria, use of an "ELCI" is prescribed for personnel protection. Other applications for "ELCI" devices may call for higher trip thresholds of 10, 30, or even 100mA as baseline leakage as some of these applications may well exceed 6mA when a load device is functioning properly.

An ELCI can easily be employed or retrofitted into existing MG Squared DOTPLUG systems. In fact, in Miami Dade County Florida, hundreds of DOTPLUG systems have been either ordered or retrofitted with ELCI systems.

Close-up below of the ELCI specifications

Avoiding Electrical Hazards
Electrical Hazards are much too common in public areas This hazard was identified at Austin Convention Center (Austin, TX). An ELCI would offer protection.

An open transformer base with a child's baseball seen inside seen in the photo below (Philidelphia, PA).

Studies Published in the IMSA Journal (September - October, 2008) estimated 1 in every 337 lighting poles posed an electrical hazard. That did not include utility poles, electrical junction boxes, traffic signal poles, cross-walk signs and other sources that have been found also posing an electrical hazard to the public. The New York Times reported that after an incident in New York City where a woman was electrocuted on a sidewalk while walking her dogs, prompted city wide inspections of thousands of construction plates, manhole covers, light poles and street-level electrical boxes throughout the city. Con Edison (NY power company) found more than 300 locations with stray voltage, including 30 with more than 50 volts, which can be enough to kill.