Renewables are becoming more common and make up an increasing proportion of a state’s energy program. As wind and solar become steadily more important, safety standards have to be improved to match the industry’s growth. Proactive and reactive safety strategies need to be reviewed. Obviously safety is not something that is ever solved. If even one worker is injured, there is room for improvement. However, according to a recent study on wind sector safety in the UK in 2016, there was a 25% increase in the restricted work injury frequency rate (RWIF) from the previous year. RWIF measures the incidents of workers being unable to perform their normal duties because of injury. There were fewer total days lost to injury but the study showed a slight (3%) increase in the total number of injuries, wipth wind turbines being the most common cause of injury.
The study also showed a 15% increase in the number of hours worked in 2016 compared to 2015, with over 10 million hours worked in offshore wind in the UK. The UK is not alone in this kind of growth. In the US, wind was responsible for 41% of all added energy capacity in 2015 and solar is expected to be the fastest growing source of energy generation in the next few decades. Given that renewables are experiencing strong growth around the world, improving levels of safety now should be an industry priority so that those presently working in wind and solar, and those who enter the industry in the future, are protected as much as possible.
Proactive Safety Vs Reactive Safety in Renewables
In health and safety, a reactive response happens after an injury or illness has occurred and usually has the purpose of minimizing the costs associated with the injury or illness. On the other hand, a proactive response to safety and health in the workplace takes place before an accident has occurred. It anticipates and tries to prevent accidents. In the solar industry, slips, trips and falls are the leading cause of injury. A proactive response to this may be installing a guard-rail system while a reactive response would be to take action once an incident has occurred.
In general, it is good to favor a proactive approach to safety management in wind and solar. Simply put, renewable energy has not been around as long as other means of energy generation so management and the workforce in general may not have the same level awareness of hazards that are present in the workplace. In this case, relying on reactive responses in the renewable industry would be a mistake. Proactive safety programs, where risks are identified and assessed, and workers can be properly trained, is the best method in ensuring high levels of safety in green energy projects, whether it be wind farms or large-scale solar projects.
Problems with Reactive Response
When companies are deciding between proactive safety vs reactive safety, they need to understand that a reactive response ends up being more expensive than the proactive response in the long run. Reactive responses costs more because responses come after an event has already happened. For example, if an injury occurs on a wind turbine, there is an investigation with the goal to discover who was to blame for the accident rather than find the systemic issues and implement a fix. Reactive safety can tend to be a passive response which does not tackle the root cause of an accident.
Proactive responses show that the company cares for its workers while reactive safety sends a bad message out to your workforce. It gives the impression that you don’t care about their safety and that you accept accidents are just an inherent part of a project. By only reacting once an accident occurs, you are sending the message that your one and only priority is the company’s bottom line. In fact a reactive strategy ends up costing a company more because costs are incurred because of injuries that are viewed as inevitable, while a more proactive approach can prevent accidents from occurring in the first place.
Proactive Safety in Renewable Projects
Proactive responses mean that there is a focus on planning aimed at developing risk management schemes, setting expectations for workers, and implementing a well-structured program that keeps workers safe from accident and injury. Contractors are commonly used in renewable energy projects and the health and safety training they receive as part their orientations is a proactive response to the workplace risks. In fact, training is one of the most important parts of any safety management scheme as they it gives the worker the help they need in order to avoid accident and injury.
Proactive Response Steps Include:
- Accident analysis that aims fix the system, not assign blame.
- Form safety committees and teams to promote a safety culture.
- Implement a recognition scheme that rewards workers who help build a safety culture.
- Hazard analysis programs, e.g. working temperatures, working from heights.
- Regular inspections and job hazard analysis.
- Focus on recognizing and rewarding actions that lead to a safer working environment, rather than focusing on purely avoiding accidents.
- Safety education and training.
- Accountability systems that do not tie discipline to accidents.
Contractors in the solar industry should be trained to avoid injuries relating to electrical hazards, lifting, ladders, working at heights, solar plumbing and working in the heat. Training also needs to include information on what to do in the event of an incident occurring so that injury and damage is mitigated. This is also true for the wind sector where electric shock (mainly from overhead power lines), falls, and thermal burn hazards and turbine-related injuries are all everyday hazards for workers. There needs to be training prior to workers stepping foot on site, as well as regular refresher training courses so safety standards don’t slip.
Hybrid Systems
It’s important to recognize that it’s not a binary choice of proactive safety vs reactive safety. It is only when an entire safety program is predicated on reactivity that it becomes a problem. In fact, the ideal safety culture in wind and solar is mainly proactive but includes some elements of reactive response. Monitoring systems to measure safety performance can be classified as a reactive response and are a vital component of any safety management program.
Workers should be outfitted with wearable technology to track actions that can help prevent accidents. Solar workers are often outside and have to deal with high temperatures. Wearables can help reduce the risk of heat stroke and dehydration by tracking a worker’s vital signs and by alerting management if there is indication an individual is in distress. If an accident does tragically occur, wearables provide huge amounts of data that can be used to pinpoint the cause that was to blame.
If there is a fault in the safety standards – such as blade failure in a wind farm, a relatively common cause of injury – you want to be able to find out how it happened. A reactive system focused on reporting and investigative procedures can be very helpful. By analysing what happens in an accident, new measures can be developed to counter incidents happening in the future. This is how reactive and proactive responses can be used in tandem to determine the cause of a problem and then implement a solution to keep workers safe.
Conclusion
Wind and solar are going to make up an increasingly large slice of the pie in how energy is generated around the world. There will be more large scale projects in the renewables space, so safety standards must not slip because demand for contractors to work on these projects will rise in parallel with the sector’s growth. Companies would be best served to use a proactive approach that identifies hazards and develops and implements a solutions to help create a safer workplace for all. There are so many hazards in the wind and solar industries – many specific to renewables – that workers need to receive comprehensive health and safety training before setting foot on-site.
