Hubbell Wiring Device-Kellems is pleased to announce the availability of our newest addition to the Industrial Cord Reel offering, GFCI Protected 15A and 20A reels. Hubbell WDK has taken a leadership position by developing the first GFCI cord reel that is compliant with UL 355, Standard for Cord Reels. In many installations, specifying engineers call for cord reels to be GFCI protected. In the past there were only two ways to achieve this, either by mounting a GFCI receptacle in the facility ceiling outlet box, which would be virtually impossible to access in the event of a fault, or to put a GFCI receptacle in the portable outlet box hanging from the reel. The problem with this solution is that if the neutral were to be cut on the cable feeding the outlet box, there still may be power present but the GFCI would not function as desired. Hubbell actively petitioned UL to evaluate this potentially dangerous condition and lead UL to revise the standard. The revised standard now calls for a GFCI device with “open neutral protection” on all detachable cord reels. (Cord reels hard wired to the facility are exempt from this requirement.) Effectively, detachable cord reels are considered portable power and now fall under the same GFCI requirements as line cords and Spider boxes.
