Underwriters Laboratories to Offer EV Charging Station Training

With tens of thousands of commercial and residential charging stations set to be deployed in the coming months and years, there should be a lot of new demand for electricians who are familiar with the electric vehicle charger installation process. Appropriately, there's now a way for those workers to familiarize themselves with that process, thanks to Underwriters Laboratories—the hundred-plus year old safety and standards non-profit responsible for the "UL" logo you've probably seen printed on light bulbs and other consumer electronics.

Through UL University—a collection of online and hands-on programs offered by UL to familiarize technicians and safety inspectors with a wide range of products and technologies—stakeholders will be able to learn about charging stations and the applicable codes that they must meet. The most important of these is the National Electrical Code, a 1000-plus page set of guidelines around which most local and national standards are based.

"We believe that the creation of these training programs can speed up the development, installation and inspection of the electric vehicle charging equipment process within the United States," said UL's Gary Savin, in a press release.

The program will be launched in the coming months, just in time for the release of the Nissan LEAF and Chevy Volt, and the accompanying free charging station installations that will be made possible thanks to a Department of Energy grant, in collaboration with Coulomb and ECOtality. Brand and model-specific instruction will also be made available soon, as will training specially geared toward safety inspectors.

Some long-time EV advocates have suggested that the installation process is no more complicated than most jobs that trained electricians deal with on a daily basis, and that no special training is actually necessary. Still, all it takes is one bad installation and one serious injury stemming from that botched job to potentially set off a hysteria, so it's probably not a bad thing to err on the side of caution whenever deploying a new technology. All consumer electronics are built to be as "idiot-proof" as possible, and UL has long played a big role in making that possible.