Category: PoE Lighting

YES. PoE is safe. Per IEEE standards, PoE is injected into a cable at voltage between 44 and 57V DC, typically 48V DC. Typically, anything less than 35V AC or 60V DC is considered safety extra low voltage (SELV), so by definition, PoE-enabled ports are SELV. That’s not to say that 48V DC can’t shock you (you’d know this if you ever touched your tongue to a 9-volt battery when you were a kid). And no one is recommending that you strip the insulation off of a twisted-pair cable conductor and poke it with your bare hands (especially while soaking wet). But with PoE, you still have little chance of getting shocked from a disconnected cable due to the actual protocol itself. That’s because the power sourcing equipment (PSE) must experience a handshake with the powered device (PD) before any power is delivered. No handshake, no power. That’s quite different than an standard AC power receptacle that is constantly supplying power, regardless of whether you’ve got a device plugged in.

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