Circuit breakers are often overlooked and under-appreciated in the electrical world. They perform a critical role in electrical circuits by protecting the system from damage caused by overcurrent or an overload of short circuit. “In short, they interrupt current flow as soon as the protective relays detect a fault,” explains Casper du Plessis, Power Systems Operational Manager: Services at electrical giant Schneider Electric. “For this reason alone, circuit breakers should be maintained and inspected more often than we do right now.” However, diagnostics may be more important.
Circuit breakers, though tiny, play a massive role in electrical circuits.
What’s the fault?
“When circuit breakers start to break in a plant or factory, it can lead to various problems, primarily downtime,” explains Du Plessis. “This can be compounded by non-availability of spare parts. Replacing even a circuit breaker, which is quite a small piece of equipment, is a time-consuming task that involves changing several connections, resulting in significant downtime. It becomes even trickier when you deal with much older circuit breakers which contractors and electricians still deal with in homes.
Downtime has a ripple effect, though, because it is not just the breaker that is a problem – there could be unforeseen surges that cause greater harm and damage to the system. “In the current energy provision landscape, extended down-time in any operation should be avoided at all costs. It is imperative that your business be running to the best of its ability in its most efficient state,” says Du Plessis.
As the adage goes, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. By implementing a maintenance and diagnostic plan, you can ensure that critical components such as circuit breakers are closely monitored and checked for faults before they happen. “Diagnostics is emerging as a critical success factor in improving electrical room safety, durability and performance. Proper electrical equipment diagnostics requires a high level of human experience and expertise, sophisticated software tools, and broad access to equipment field performance data,” says Du Plessis. “Breaker diagnostic tools assess the speed of breakers over time and whether they have slowed down. This kind of diagnostic test will highlight circuit breakers in the system that either need to be repaired or replaced. By performing this regularly, you can have a maintenance plan in place that ensures system integrity from the ground up.”
The diagnostic tools do more than single out issues and problem areas, they generate reports that include data from visual inspections, as well as technical data from the various tests conducted on the breaker to assess its condition. “At Schneider Electric, our ProDiag diagnostic tools offer a combination of dedicated sensors and internal software that allows users to analyse circuit breakers, trip units, relays, fuses and other electrical components. Our ProDiag Breaker tool identifies the symptoms of undetected incidents or degradation of equipment and offers benefits such as detecting the early stages of breaker degradation, the protection of downstream electrical distribution equipment, goods and the people operating them, and enhancing reliability, mitigating unexpected shutdown risks and operating costs. In short, diagnostics can help prevent huge ripple-effect issues in your system. And while circuit breakers are tiny pieces of equipment, they are more important than many people realise,” says Du Plessis.
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