“Digital Electricity”
Will Change the
Way We Wire and Power Buildings

The demand for power keeps going up. Seemingly exponentially.

Whether it’s power-hungry devices or just a larger number of devices in general, more and more power is running through buildings to accommodate the need.

The trouble is that power over ethernet can only do so much.

With a distance threshold of 100m on copper and a power ceiling of 48 volts DC, your only solution is to run more wires. Until now… or rather soon.

Digital electricity aka fault-managed power is poised to be the new standard. Even the National Electrical Code, which is notoriously slow to adopt change, is officially calling it Class 4 power and adding it to the 2023 NEC (Article 726). Add UL certification (1400-1 and 1400-2) and it’s increasingly clear that Class 4 is poised for takeoff.

Lightning speed for regulatory change. What’s all the hubbub though?

Simply put: Class 4 means more power over longer distances.

Up to 450 volts of AC or DC and 1 kilowatt of power.

And distance is capped by how far you send your fiber cables which can be thousands of meters.

Can that much power – power that can run through smaller wires incidentally – be safe?

Yep. As mentioned Class 4 wiring is also known as fault-managed which relates directly to safety.

Power is transmitted via packetized energy transfer…  hundreds of small “packets” of energy are heading from the transmitter to the receiver over a cable. If a fault is detected by the transmitter, i.e. a short circuit, a person touching the line, shoddy wiring, overcurrent, etc., it triggers an immediate stop of power flow.

“Immediate” as in milliseconds, making it safe to touch and minimizing the risk of fire drastically.

Are you starting to see how this can revolutionize wiring and eventually replace PoE?

We’ll keep you up to speed on Class 4 power but don’t hesitate to reach out with questions.