Internet of power- Digital circuit breakers.

Presumably they can have an auto-resetting function, but how do you determine if the circuit can be safely re-energised and what if a RCD tripped as well, the RCD would need to be auto-resetting, but if a fault took out both the circuit breaker and the RCD the circuit really needs assessing onsite before re-energising.


Andy

Auto-reset can be incredibly dangerous in the wrong circumstances, though I admit in different circumstances it might be valuable. Normal practice would be to limit it to a small number of attempted closures (one or two) and to inhibit it completely in the case of certain types of activating fault such as a full blown short circuit. One of the problems of remote closing using an i-Pad is the person using the i-Pad may have no information on the cause of the trip, so how is he/she going to decide whether it is safe to re-close?

(and without the thermal losses).


Yet no one seems to care about the parasitic losses of the ubiquitous double socket-outlets with integral USB outlets........


Regards


BOD

Indeed, and nor do folk seem to be concerned about the awful humming noise they make when the room is otherwise silent, nor that they fail with monotonous regularity.

Apart from the concerns already expressed, would not a much faster trip be counter productive in many situations ?  LED fittings are already marginal on standard  B type MCBs and may trip C types in some circumstances.

Apart from the concerns already expressed, would not a much faster trip be counter productive in many situations ?  LED fittings are already marginal on standard  B type MCBs and may trip C types in some circumstances.

I was just thinking the same thing - although it's not just the overall speed of tripping, but the current level/duration before that causes the device to decide to trip. If the devices could have a bit more logic in them then perhaps there's a possibility of a more fuse-like response - i.e. opening quickly for very large (fault) currents, but allowing somewhat smaller (inrush) currents to persist for a little longer. There might even be some potential for proper discrimination/selectivity between these devices (unlike MCBs). The faster speeds could allow for far better shock protection overall too - e.g. being able to have 0.4s disconnection times even for submains and large final circuits (allowed for by much faster disconnection by downstream devices)  would allow the removal of one of the larger elephants from the regulations' room.


I agree I don't like the idea of them being open to the internet, but on their own private local network - so physical access to the installation is needed - I think security could be acceptable while keeping most of the benefits.


Price would be interesting - I can't see them coming in cheaper than the current crop of AFDDs....


   - Andy.