scope:

This International Standard is a basic safety publication primarily intended for use by technical committees in the preparation of standards in accordance with the principles laid down in IEC Guide 104 and ISO/IEC Guide 51.

It is not intended to be used as a stand-alone standard.

According to IEC Guide 104, technical committees, when preparing, amending, or revising their publications, are required to make use of any basic safety publication such as IEC 61140.

This International Standard applies to the protection of persons and livestock against electric shock. The intent is to give fundamental principles and requirements which are common to electrical installations, systems and equipment or necessary for their coordination, without limitations with regard to the magnitude of the voltage or current, or the type of current, and for frequencies up to 1 000 Hz.

Some clauses in this standard refer to low-voltage and high-voltage systems, installations and equipment. For the purposes of this standard, low-voltage is any rated voltage up to and including 1 000 V a.c. or 1 500 V d.c.. High voltage is any rated voltage exceeding 1 000 V a.c. or 1 500 V d.c..

It should be noted that, for an efficient design and selection of protective measures, the type of voltage that may occur and its waveform needs to be considered, i.e. a.c. or d.c. voltage, sinusoidal, transient, phase controlled, superimposed d.c., as well as a possible mixture of these forms. The installations or equipment may influence the waveform of the voltage, e.g. by inverters or converters. The currents flowing under normal operating conditions and under fault conditions depend on the described voltage.