Are amps and volts created equal?

Abstract

This paper briefly reviews the way current IT and consumer electronics safety standards treat the risk of electrically caused fire is purely proportional to power. That implies it is symmetrical in regards to available voltage and current. It then proposes a simple general model to divide electrical failure modes that may be fire risks into two distinct types series and parallel resistive faults. It considers the relative merits of real inductors and capacitors as energy storage devices. Then it looks at some real world high voltage and high current electrical sources and failure modes, and finally argues based on the previous points that the available voltage is a greater risk factor than the available current.