Certification Criteria for Nonstructural Electrical Components for Building Code Applications

There is a compelling need to standardize electrical equipment certification practices for essential building applications. Today, the only “standard’s vehicle” to provide guidance on electrical equipment certification is loosely outlined in ICC-ES AC156 nonstructural test protocol. The ICC-ES AC156 test protocol was intentionally developed to be highly generic in construct to cover all types of nonstructural components, including architectural, electrical, and mechanical components. It was written not to focus on product-specific criteria for answering the question of “what to test” but to address the important question of “how to test,” which was not explicitly defined in model building code seismic provisions. At the time of AC156 development, defining “how to test” was the primary motivation. This paper focuses on answering the former question of “what to test” when certifying highly variable electrical nonstructural components. Type testing equipment certification is the rationalization process to select appropriate test unit candidates from within the pre-engineered design options controlling equipment enclosures and the subcomponent functional units that provide equipment functionality. The goal of this paper is to outline a new “standard’s vehicle” to provide product-specific criteria for certification of electrical equipment including: (1) selection criteria for identifying appropriate test unit configurations, (2) performance criteria for validating equipment functionality pre- and post-seismic testing, and (3) rating criteria for quantifying seismic withstand resilience across multiple test unit configurations. The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) is developing product-specific certification criteria to assure the right test candidates are selected and tested in order to bring needed objective transparency to seismic certification of electrical equipment. The development of ICC-ES AC156 was a necessary first step. The development of complimentary industry standards to close the loop on “what to test” will increase the resilience of electrical equipment to resist earthquake demands.