A key point in the article was the problem with existing safety standards. The  writer, Tiffany Hsu,  asserted that: “Watchdog groups say a hodgepodge of state and federal renewable energy safety standards haven’t kept up with the growth of the industry. Some were adapted from other industries and don’t specifically cover wind and solar projects, while others are guidelines rather than mandatory regulations. Many are old and are just now being updated.”

As a company that spends a fair amount of time training wind turbine workers, I wasn’t quite sure what was meant about this “hodgepodge” of regulations. It would seem that OSHA has pretty well spelled out the minimal requirements for working on these structures. In the areas of all protection, confined space entry and hazardous energy control (which are the main hazards workers face), the safety requirements are simple and hard to misinterpret.

If workers are exposed to fall hazards, then the employer has to identify these hazards, develop the means and methods for controlling these hazards and train and equip workers. If the workers will be entering enclosed areas, then again the employer is obligated to identify the hazards and develop the means and methods for controlling or eliminating them. Lockout/tagout has the same requirements.

As far as being adapted from other industries, solar and wind are regulated by OSHA’s 1910.269 “Electric Power Generation, Transmission and Distribution.” These standards, it would seem, provide pretty specific guidelines for identifying and controlling hazards. And I think if you looked back at accidents that have occurred on wind farms or solar arrays, my guess is that the root cause of these accidents was due to an employer violating on or more of these standards. 

Accidents mentioned in the article include: “Technicians have fallen hundreds of feet; others have been crushed by parts or trapped in twisting machinery. Pilots in small planes have crashed into the towers. Electrical explosions last year left a worker in Illinois with third-degree burns and two others in San Diego County with similar injuries.”

Again, bad pilots notwithstanding, each of these accidents are addressed by specific provisions of the OSHA codes. Add to that OSHA’s General Duty Clause and it’s hard to see where additional regulations are needed.

If there is an area of confusion it might be that many employers haven’t carefully thought through their emergency action plans but that is true in a wide variety of industries, not just solar and wind.

While it’s easy to think that a whole new host of regulations are needed for the supposedly “new” industry, it’s my sense that employers simply need to go back and revisit their current obligations under the existing standards.

As a trainer and consultant I rarely tell them that something is or isn’t compliant (unless the answer is obvious) because the questioners may have omitted a key piece of information needed to make that determination . Instead I often try to provide them with a process for determining the answer on their own.

A first step in this process often involves understanding the intent of the OSHA standard they are trying to comply with. For example. the intent of the confined space standard (29 CFR 1910.146) is to implement the, “. . . requirements for practices and procedures to protect employees in general industry from the hazards of entry into permit-required confined spaces.” So if a question comes up regarding the proper intervals for air monitoring or whether two confined space entrants can be attached to the same retrieval line, I try to figure out whether the practice being described meets the intent of the standard. For excavation and fall protection, the intent of these standards are also quite clear. In an excavation, workers cannot be crushed, drowned, or asphyxiated. Likewise for fall protection, workers must be protected from slips, trips and falls to lower levels. 

Almost everyone who understands the basic concepts of safety realizes that blind adherance to the wording of a standard can, in some cases, create additional hazards that were not foreseen by those who actually wrote the standard. In these cases the employer is still obligated to develop the policies and procedures needed to accomplish the task while fulfilling the intent of the standard.

The reason for this is quite simple. Specifically, the General Duty clause requires employers to identify all job-related hazards and take corrective measures, and OSHA generally allows employers some degree of flexibility in developing the means and methods needed to protect workers.

In our experience, this generally requires an understanding of the intent of standard. If you meet this intent using sound safety practices you will, most likely, be safe and compliant.