NFPA 70®: NEC® 2017 Editio‪n is a reference mobile app that allows you to learn and study international safety regulations on electrical codes. Developed by the NFPA or National Fire Protection Association, this app is a book and safety manual in a handy app interface. It contains detailed articles on topics such as safe electrical design, installation, and inspection that’s catered to any region in the world. However, it lacks some useful features for bookmarking.

Does the NFPA publish the NEC?

First founded in 1896, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) is an international nonprofit organization devoted to eliminating death, injury, property, and economic loss due to fire, electrical, and other related hazards. It aims to protect people and property from electrical hazards—and it does this by publishing helpful reference materials to educate people. Its most prominent work is the National Electrical Code (NEC) or NFPA 70, which contains electrical codes and regulations for you to abide by.

This reference manual is considered the NFPA’s foremost benchmarks and can be bought as a physical book. However, it can be such a hassle if you need to be outside but also require the book to be with you. In that case, you can try out its app version. The NFPA 70®: NEC® 2017 Editio‪n app contains the 2017 edition of the NEC and lets you check out its revised sections with ease.

It encompasses comprehensive regulations for wiring, overcurrent protection, grounding, and installation. Plus, it contains updates and five all-new Articles—such as Article 712 for Direct Current Microgrids. The revisions are pretty easy to see, as well, with indicators such as gray shading for technical changes and bullet points for deleted paragraphs. However, it doesn’t have the option to highlight text and the tables can be hard to read for certain device screen sizes.

Needs some improvements

Overall, NFPA 70®: NEC® 2017 Editio‪n isn’t too bad of a reference app. It has the official guide from the NFPA and allows you to check out differences between the 2017 edition and the old one. However, this app doesn’t let you manually highlight text so bookmarking is tricky. Additionally, viewing the tables is a bit difficult depending on the size of your device’s screen. Nevertheless, this is great material from the NFPA.