The cost of compliance with the final standards were estimated using the baseline of current electric utility practices. Electric utilities have had to comply with other parts of OSHA standards since 1970, and have been subject to various national consensus standards such as the National Electrical Safety Code and those of the American Society for Testing and Materials. Since many costs have already been incurred to comply with these standards, this analysis covers incremental costs that will need to be incurred to comply with new requirements imposed by 1910.137 and 1910.269. Compliance costs of the standards were based on industry profile information, current compliance rates, unit costs for required equipment, and hourly compensation of labor. For each provision of the standard, OSHA estimated initial costs and annual recurring costs.
Initial costs represent up-front expenditures for program development and equipment.
Any equipment that will need to be purchased was then annualized over the expected life of the resource in order to show these costs on an annual basis. Other ongoing expenditures incurred annually include refresher training, equipment maintenance, and inspections. OSHA summed the annualized capital costs and ongoing costs to estimate total annual costs. Table 9 outlines the first year costs and annual costs by each sector affected by the final rule. The primary objective of OSHA's standards for electric power generation, transmission, and distribution work and for electrical protective equipment is to reduce the number of employee fatalities and injuries associated with the hazards involved in this work.