Stray Voltage in Human and Animal Environments:

The term stray voltage was originally coined in the 1970’s when dairy producers and utility engineers realized small voltages between cow contact points stressed the animals and if high enough, reduced milk production. Since then, the term has grown within the realm of the popular press and public’s understanding to encompass other electrical conditions including human touch and step potentials, dangerous short circuit and ground faults, electric and magnetic fields (EMF) as well as harmonic distortion or similar power quality terms. The presentation clarified the confusion caused by stray voltage definitions including some states’ regulatory rules, reinforced our engineering understanding of the subject based on the principles of physics and tried and true investigation and mitigation methods and what the IEEE working group brought forward on the subject, and set straight common urban legends repeated by many groups on the internet and in regulatory proceedings.

About the Speaker:

Greg Stark grew up in a small farming community in South-Central Nebraska and received both a B.S. and M.S. in Agricultural Engineering from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  He started his career in 1982 as a research engineer assisting rural electric cooperatives in Kansas and Nebraska with irrigation and other demand side management and response programs as well as investigating and mitigating stray voltage and power quality problems. From 1988 to 2002, Greg served as Executive Director of the Texas Agri-Business Electric Council, an association of the investor-owned electric utilities in Texas operated by Texas A&M University that provided customer and employee training as well as technical assistance to the utility company members.

For the past 19 years he has split time between his consulting practice and the Biological and Agricultural Engineering Department at Texas A&M University as a Professor of Practice where he teaches courses on energy management, electronic controls and co-teaches the senior capstone design sequence of courses. His consulting activities focus on the areas of electrical codes and standards, stray voltage, power quality and energy management. He is frequently invited by utilities and industry groups to both investigate problems and teach training courses related to these subjects. Greg is a licensed professional engineer in Texas and has authored or co-authored numerous technical publications, papers, and conference proceedings.