Brief History

The Protection Engineers Group (PEG) was founded in the late 1970's by Mr. Ed Cohen of the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), now known as the Rural Utilities Service (RUS), and is an organized users group of telecommunications industry electrical protection specialists. PEG was originally sponsored by the United States Independent Telephone Association (USITA), then sponsored by the United States Telephone Association (USTA), and in 1986 became sponsored by the Exchange Carriers Standards Association (ECSA), now the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS).

PEG is no longer involved in the development of specifications or standards, but meets annually in a conference-driven environment to encourage the free-flow of ideas among electrical protection specialists and to be a resource to provide state of the knowledge information on electrical protection.

The formation of PEG created the opportunity to develop PEG-1, which was later submitted to the IEEE, Secretariat of ASC C62 on Surge Arresters (NOTE: NEMA is now the Secretariat of ASC C62), to create American National Standard C62.61 (Gas Tube Surge Arresters on Wire Line Telephone Circuits). ANSI C62.61 establishes certain test specifications to be used by the entire industry, as opposed to individual manufacturers setting up their own particular tests, saving the telecommunications industry time and money. PEG established the actual pass/fail criteria for C62.61, PEG-1, since ANSI does not and can not put this type of criteria in its standards.

The specifications were developed by the PEG Equipment Performance Task Group (EPTG). These documents were then submitted to the PEG membership for approval via letter balloting. Since PEG was not an ANSI-accredited committee, if they wanted to have a draft specification become an American National Standard, it would have to be submitted to an ANSI-accredited committee and be published under the ANSI- accredited committee's name (i.e., C62). PEG-2 through PEG-8 were not submitted to ANSI because PEG created pass/fail criteria in its specifications, and if submitted to ANSI, the document would have been fundamentally changed, and the essential criteria would be removed.

R. Bruce Melton, the PEG Past Chair, noted that PEG is active in the National Electrical Code (NEC) and National Electrical Safety Code (NESC) arenas. PEG submits proposals to these code panels on issues which affect them and they have a strong influence on work done in this area. PEG also works closely with the Underwriters Laboratories (UL) in the development of safety standards.

PEG was originally an organization of local service providers, but since 1995 has opened its membership to all service providers and manufacturers in the telecommunications protection field.

NOTE: Information provided in this report was provided in part by Mr. Alvin Lai of ATIS; Mr. R. Bruce Melton, Past PEG Chairman, of BellSouth; and Mr. Ed Cohen, founder of PEG.