Comparison of IEC and ANSI Terminology

When performing designs where mixed standards are used, there will be lots of confusions along the process. These confusions will one way or another affect the result of the project in terms of delivery time, quality and costs. Most of the larger projects have these standards in-placed, smaller projects tend to be more relaxed with respect to the use of mixed standards.

A good example of the use of mixed standard was an offshore project in Bohai Bay near Beijing, China. The existing offshore platforms was constructed, owned and operated by an American company. The standards used were all North American Standards. After decades of operation, the offshore platform requires expansion. The new platforms will be constructed based on Chinese standards which were basically IEC standards. Existing electrical equipment and cables are all ANSI/IEEE standards. New electrical equipment and cables will be IEC. To tie-in the existing and new equipment became very difficult. The rest is history.

In a mixed standards project, understanding the terminologies is essential. Below is a list of the most commonly used terms.

To see more terminologies, refer to IEC 60050 Vocabulary and the ANSI/IEEE Std 100 – The IEEE Standard Dictionary of Electrical and Electronics Terms.