Does Battery operated electrical equipment need PAT Testing?

Whilst battery-operated electrical equipment doesn’t fall within scope of PAT testing, it is still electrical equipment and you need to make sure it is safe to use. The charger for the battery operated item, will need PAT testing. There is more information on what does and does not need PAT Testing here.

For example a laptop does not need a test, but it’s charger adaptor and power lead does. Also a battery-powered drill doesn’t need testing, but it’s charging unit does.

In order to comply with electrical safety regulations every workplace needs to ensure all electrical equipment is safe to use; this can be powered by the mains or battery powered equipment.

However, battery powered equipment such as laptops, mobile phones, even battery powered tools; do not fall under the remit of portable appliance testing, as they do not have and are not designed to operate whilst connected to the mains power via a plug and socket scenario.

However; their charging units will need checking as part of the PAT test.

So your PAT tester won’t test your battery powered appliances (unless you tell them to), so it is your responsibility to ensure these appliances are repaired if they get damaged in any way.

However, even though the appliance won’t be tested the lead and power adaptors do need checking; so we will test these to make sure these are safe. In fact it is on things like laptop chargers that we often find faults.

It’s natural to wrap up a laptop lead to shove it in a bag, and doing this constantly leads to the cable getting damaged. This is a regular issue in our work, as it is usually something that cannot be repaired, so we have to advise clients to buy a replacement.

Similar with phone chargers, as people have to replace the original they buy a cheap replacement, which often turns out to be counterfeit which are not as well built and become a fire risk.

So it is important that you have user checks conducted in your workplace. A user check is something carried out by the user periodically when they use electrical equipment.

How often this is done is dependent on the risk of using the appliance or continuing to use it.

We have established that battery operated electrical equipment does not need a PAT test, but you are still responsible for ensuring it is safe to use. The best way to do this is to implement user checks into your workplace; this is getting your staff to check electrical equipment before they use it.

There is more information on how to implement a user checking system here.

If you are ready to arrange your PAT Testing for your mains powered electrical equipment get in touch with us today.