Hi, I am Hus and I’m here with Andy, who is a highly experienced electrician and trainer and assessor.

Andy Holman:
Morning, Hus. Thanks for having me along.

Hus Rupani:
In this video, we’ll look at the lockout devices that we supply with the alternate supplies board, and then Andy will show us how to use them. Let’s get started.
Let’s look at all the lockout devices we have in our kit. We’ll start off with this one. Andy, if you could tell us a little bit more about this?

Andy Holman:
Yep. It’s a simple little affectionately known as a lock dog, plastic, it’s got a screw in through the hole at the back, comes down and clamps onto the top of the breaker, screwdriver. Needs to be on firm but don’t over tighten because of the breakers. If you over-tighten these, you’ll do damage to the breaker. But once it’s on and firm, then we put the padlock through it. Which actually blocks access to the screwdriver slot. So that prevents anyone from removing the dog. So normally used on single-module breakers.

Hus Rupani:
Let’s look at this one, now. What about this?

Andy Holman:
Exactly the same as the orange one, the only difference is this one’s slightly wider and will fit a lot of the industrial breakers, your Terasaki’s, your Westinghouse and the like. And can also be used as we’ve got here, a two-pole module or a three-pole module. Being slightly wider, it will go over those rather than just go over the single-module of a standard MCV.

Hus Rupani:
Let’s now look at this lockout device. Andy, if you could tell us a bit more about this one please?

Andy Holman:
All right. This one here has got a different gate in the back and it’s got a set of teeth that just bite onto the bottom. Now, with our normal circuit breaker, there’s only a fairly small area and this wouldn’t fit over it. But when we come to the larger breakers with the long tongues, that’s designed to slide over that when it’s in the off position. But that will go over the breaker and then do up and hold in place, and we’ll show that more when we put it on properly.

Hus Rupani:
And what about this padlock?

Andy Holman:
Lockout device. Normally, one key that you would hold and a supervisor would have a master key or the second key in an emergency. Note the black, it’s actually plastic. So although these are all plastic and are safe, there will be times when you may be around open terminals. So rather than the standard padlock being metal, the plastic just makes it safer.

Hus Rupani:
And finally, we have this tag. If you could tell us a bit more about this one, Andy?

Andy Holman:
Ah, “Danger. Do not operate.” Room on here for your name, contact details, and normally on the back why it’s been isolated. And this is the tag that will show people who to contact if they want to know why the circuit’s out. Although you would’ve notified your customer before you start, but if anything goes wrong or they need to track down in an emergency, they know who to go to. It also tells people that that circuit is out of service and shouldn’t be interfered with. And that goes in combination with the lock and the lock dog.

Hus Rupani:
Now we’ll ask Andy to show us how to use these lockout devices.

Andy Holman:
All right. So we’ll go through using these devices in an order that we’d normally use for isolation. We’re going to disconnect the PV array. From the PV array, we’ll turn off the power to the inverter. And then finally, we’ll shut down the battery and that will then make all the inputs into the inverter isolated.
So we’ll start off with the first one. Multimeter in hand, our PV array output. We’re seeing our power that we know that the system is live.

Hus Rupani:
So how much are we seeing?

Andy Holman:
About 28 volts.

Hus Rupani:
Okay.

Andy Holman:
We’ve got 28 volts coming out of the isolator. So we know that at the moment the isolator is on and it’s showing that on indication. So now we’d go through the process turning it off, and this one is slightly different than most isolators. This one, you’ve actually got to turn upwards to the lock position to physically get the padlock into the lock spot. At that point, you’ve filled out tag. Most importantly, key remains in your possession so that no one can get your lock off.
We’ve now isolated it, but to prove that it’s isolated, we now go to the isolated output. We see no voltage. We go back to our 28 volts. We know our meter is still working. We have now proved we’ve isolated the PV. It’s isolated and we’ve confirmed that it’s working by our meter still working on completion.
All right, now we’ll move on to the inverter. Once again, we can see the inverter voltage coming in and we’ve got 12 volts sitting there. We’re going to isolate the inverter switch. The lock dog we now put on, hold in the center, tighten gently just till it’s firm. Don’t over tighten it. You don’t want to strip the thread in the lock dog or more importantly, break off the circuit breaker itself. Then the same deal, on with the lock, on with the tag and that key in your pocket.
Are we finished? No. We have to go back and prove that the 12 volts has now disappeared. We go back to our known source, top of the battery, and we’ve got our 13 volts coming in. So once again, we’ve proved that we’ve isolated, the isolation’s been effective, there’s no power on the input. And then we’ve tested the meter on a known source to satisfy that the meter didn’t magically break in that split second between that isolation. So we are guaranteed that the isolation’s effective.
All right. Now finally, we’re going to isolate the battery using a battery isolating circuit breaker here. So once again, we are seeing our battery output sitting at 13 volts. We isolate that supply. We now attach this dog from the bottom and this little clip sits up in the top. Once again, we just do the thing up firm so that it can’t come out. By closing that over the top, we can no longer get to the operating wheel. Tag, key held. We come back, we see no voltage. And this time we’ll use the battery as the known source. And we see our 13 volts again, meter off, proving that we’ve now isolated that battery isolator.

Hus Rupani:
Excellent, thank you. We just looked at the lockout devices that we supply with the alternate supplies board and Andy showed us how to use them. If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to contact us. Thanks for watching.