Page 6040 - Week 14 - Thursday, 8 December 2011
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(3) Electrical inspectors must be appointed by the construction occupations registrar in accordance with section 41 of the Electricity Safety Act 1971. While temporary appointments can be made from outside the Directorate, it usually takes up to eight weeks to train an electrician to undertake the work and means that senior inspectors need to be diverted away from field inspections to provide that training. The Directorate’s budget does not extend to engaging additional contractors and, in any event, they would not be fully operational within the timeframe required to impact on the current backlog of work. Additional full time inspectors have been appointed and trained and they are starting to impact on the backlog.
(4) The existing booking system does not provide for this level of disaggregated information. For the month ended 31 October 2011, the approximate numbers are as follows:
|
Certificates of Electrical Safety (CES) forms received and inspections not booked |
775 |
|
Inspections booked |
1300 |
|
New CES received each day by fax & email Approx |
110 |
|
Unbooked defects Approx |
450 |
|
No access – need to be rebooked Approx |
60 |
|
Total number of jobs (booked and unbooked) |
2695 |
In general, the failure rate for electrical safety inspections of photovoltaic installations has changed over time but has recently reached approximately 50%. Failures are due to non-compliance of the installations with mandatory electrical safety criteria of the Australian Wiring Rules (AS/NZS 3000: 2007) and/or the relevant photovoltaic standards AS/NZS 5033: 2005, and range in severity.
(5) The existing booking system does not provide for this level of disaggregated information. However, the vast majority of inspections carried out during weekends to date have been for inspections of dwellings under construction and temporary supply installations. Overtime during weekend periods is regularly utilised to keep on top of temporary supplies and new homes/units. As such the PV installations are predominantly inspected during the weekdays.
(6) See response to question 5.
(7) The inspection fee is currently $192.50. It can be received as public monies by ESDD at the Mitchell office and may be paid by cash, cheque or credit card.
(8) The average time waiting times for an electrical inspection for a PV installation booked since May 2011 are approximately as follows:
|
May 2011 |
6 weeks |
|
June 2011 |
10 weeks |
|
July 2011 |
12 weeks |
|
August 2011 |
12 weeks |
|
September 2011 |
14 weeks |
|
October 2011 |
16 weeks |
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