Electrical Engineering Requirements for Merchant Vessels

As part of the President's Regulatory Reinvention Initiative, the Coast Guard is amending its electrical engineering regulations to reduce the regulatory burden on the marine industry, purge obsolete and out-of-date regulations, and eliminate requirements that create an unwarranted differential between domestic rules and international standards. This rulemaking harmonizes, where possible, the electrical engineering regulations with recent amendments to the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, 1974, as amended. Additionally, this rulemaking dramatically revises certain prescriptive electrical equipment design, specification, and approval requirements and replaces them with performance-based requirements that incorporate international standards.