Circuit breaker
A circuit breaker is an electrical safety device designed to protect an electrical circuit from damage caused by current in excess of that which the equipment can safely carry. Its basic function is to interrupt current flow to protect equipment and to prevent fire. Unlike a fuse, which interrupts once and then must be replaced, a circuit breaker can be reset to resume normal operation.
Circuit breakers are commonly installed in distribution boards. Apart from its safety purpose, a circuit breaker is also often used as a main switch to manually disconnect and connect electrical power to a whole electrical sub-network.
Circuit breakers are made in varying current ratings, from devices that protect low-current circuits or individual household appliances, to switchgear designed to protect high-voltage circuits feeding an entire city. Any device which protects against excessive current by automatically removing power from a faulty system, such as a circuit breaker or fuse, can be referred to as an over-current protection device.
Origins
An early form of circuit breaker was described by Thomas Edison in an 1879 patent application, although his commercial power distribution system used fuses. Its purpose was to protect lighting circuit wiring from accidental short circuits and overloads. A modern miniature circuit breaker similar to the ones now in use was patented by Brown, Boveri & Cie in 1924. Hugo Stotz, an engineer who had sold his company to Brown, Boveri & Cie, was credited as the inventor on German patent 458392. Stotz's invention was the forerunner of the modern thermal-magnetic breaker commonly used in household load centers to this day.Interconnection of multiple generator sources into an electrical grid required the development of circuit breakers with increasing voltage ratings and increased ability to safely interrupt the increasing short-circuit currents produced by networks. Simple air-break manual switches produced hazardous arcs when interrupting high-voltage circuits; these gave way to oil-enclosed contacts, and various forms using the directed flow of pressurized air, or pressurized oil, to cool and interrupt the arc. By 1935, the specially constructed circuit breakers used at the Boulder Dam project used eight series breaks and pressurized oil flow to interrupt faults of up to 2,500 MVA, in three AC cycles.
Operation
All circuit breaker systems have common features in their operation, but details vary substantially depending on the voltage class, current rating and type of the circuit breaker.The circuit breaker must first detect a fault condition. In small mains and low-voltage circuit breakers, this is usually done within the device itself. Typically, the heating or magnetic effects of electric current are employed. Circuit breakers for large currents or high voltages are usually arranged with protective relay pilot devices to sense a fault condition and to operate the opening mechanism. These typically require a separate power source, such as a battery, although some high-voltage circuit breakers are self-contained with current transformers, protective relays, and internal power sources.
Once a fault is detected, the circuit breaker contacts must open to interrupt the circuit; this is commonly done using mechanically stored energy contained within the breaker, such as a spring or compressed air to separate the contacts. A breaker may also use the higher current caused by the fault to separate the contacts, via thermal expansion or increased magnetic field. A small circuit breaker typically has a manual control lever to switch the circuit off or reset a tripped breaker, while a larger unit may use a solenoid to trip the mechanism, and an electric motor to restore energy to springs.
The circuit breaker contacts must carry the load current without excessive heating, and must also withstand the heat of the arc produced when interrupting the circuit. Contacts are made of copper or copper alloys, silver alloys and other highly conductive materials. Service life of the contacts is limited by the erosion of contact material due to arcing while interrupting the current. Miniature and molded-case circuit breakers are usually discarded when the contacts have worn, but power circuit breakers and high-voltage circuit breakers have replaceable contacts.
When a high current or voltage is interrupted, an arc is generated. The maximum length of the arc is generally proportional to the voltage while the intensity is proportional to the current. This arc must be contained, cooled and extinguished in a controlled way, so that the gap between the contacts can again withstand the voltage in the circuit. Different circuit breakers use vacuum, air, insulating gas, or oil as the medium the arc forms in. Different techniques are used to extinguish the arc including
- Lengthening or deflecting the arc
- Intensive cooling
- Division into partial arcs
- Zero-point quenching
- Connecting capacitors in parallel with contacts in DC circuits.
Arc interruption
Low-voltage miniature circuit breakers use air alone to extinguish the arc. These circuit breakers contain so-called arc chutes, a stack of mutually insulated parallel metal plates that divide and cool the arc. By splitting the arc into smaller arcs the arc is cooled down while the arc voltage is increased and serves as an additional impedance that limits the current through the circuit breaker. The current-carrying parts near the contacts provide easy deflection of the arc into the arc chutes by a magnetic force of a current path, although magnetic blowout coils or permanent magnets could also deflect the arc into the arc chute. The number of plates in the arc chute is dependent on the short-circuit rating and nominal voltage of the circuit breaker.In larger ratings, oil circuit breakers rely upon vaporization of some of the oil to blast a jet of oil through the arc.
Gas circuit breakers sometimes stretch the arc using a magnetic field, and then rely upon the dielectric strength of the sulfur hexafluoride to quench the stretched arc.
Vacuum circuit breakers have minimal arcing. The arc is quenched when it is stretched a very small amount. Vacuum circuit breakers are frequently used in modern medium-voltage switch gear to.
Air circuit breakers may use compressed air to blow out the arc, or alternatively, the contacts are rapidly swung into a small sealed chamber, the escaping of the displaced air thus blowing out the arc.
Circuit breakers are usually able to terminate all current very quickly: typically the arc is extinguished between 30 and 150 ms after the mechanism has been tripped, depending upon age and construction of the device. The maximum current value and let-through energy determine the quality of the circuit breakers.
Short circuit
Circuit breakers are rated both by the normal current that they are expected to carry, and the maximum short-circuit current that they can safely interrupt. This latter figure is the ampere interrupting capacity of the breaker.Under short-circuit conditions, the calculated or measured maximum prospective short-circuit current may be many times the normal, rated current of the circuit. When electrical contacts open to interrupt a large current, there is a tendency for an arc to form between the opened contacts, which would allow the current to continue. This condition can create conductive ionized gases and molten or vaporized metal, which can cause the further continuation of the arc or create additional short circuits, potentially resulting in the explosion of the circuit breaker and the equipment that it is installed in. Therefore, circuit breakers incorporate various features to divide and extinguish the arcs.
The maximum short-circuit current that a breaker can interrupt is determined by testing. Application of a breaker in a circuit with a prospective short-circuit current higher than the breaker's interrupting capacity rating may result in failure of the breaker to safely interrupt a fault. In a worst-case scenario, a breaker may successfully interrupt a fault only to explode when reset.
Typical domestic panel circuit breakers are rated to interrupt short-circuit current.
Miniature circuit breakers used to protect control circuits or small appliances may not have sufficient interrupting capacity to use at a panel board; these circuit breakers are called "supplemental circuit protectors" to distinguish them from distribution-type circuit breakers.
Standard current ratings
Circuit breakers are manufactured with standard ratings, using a system of preferred numbers to create a useful selection of ratings. A miniature circuit breaker has a fixed trip setting; changing the operating current value requires replacing the whole circuit breaker. Circuit breakers with higher ratings can have adjustable trip settings, allowing fewer standardized products to be used, adjusted to the applicable precise ratings when installed. For example, a circuit breaker with a 400 ampere frame size might have its over-current detection threshold set only 300 amperes where that rating is appropriate.For low-voltage distribution circuit breakers an international standard, IEC 60898-1, defines rated current as the maximum current that a breaker is designed to carry continuously. The commonly available preferred values for rated current are 1A, 2A, 4A, 6 A, 10 A, 13 A, 16 A, 20 A, 25 A, 32 A, 40 A, 50 A, 63 A, 80 A, 100 A, and 125 A. The circuit breaker is labeled with the rated current in amperes prefixed by a letter, which indicates the instantaneous tripping current that causes the circuit breaker to trip without intentional time delay expressed in multiples of the rated current:
| Type | Instantaneous tripping current |
| B | 3–5 times rated current, e.g. a nominally device will trip at 30–50 A |
| C | 5–10 times |
| D | 10–14 times |
| K | 8–12 times For the protection of loads that cause frequent short-duration current peaks in normal operation |
| Z | 2–3 times for durations on the order of tens of seconds. For the protection of loads such as semiconductor devices or measuring circuits using current transformers. |
Circuit breakers are also rated by the maximum fault current that they can interrupt; this allows use of more economical devices on systems unlikely to develop the high short-circuit current found on, for example, a large commercial building distribution system.
In the United States, Underwriters Laboratories certifies equipment ratings, called Series Ratings for circuit breaker equipment used for buildings. Power circuit breakers and medium- and high-voltage circuit breakers used for industrial or electric power systems are designed and tested to ANSI or IEEE standards in the C37 series. For example, standard C37.16 lists preferred frame size current ratings for power circuit breakers in the range of 600 to 5000 amperes. Trip current settings and time–current characteristics of these breakers are generally adjustable.
For medium- and high-voltage circuit breakers used in switchgear, substations and generating stations, relatively few standard frame sizes are generally manufactured. These circuit breakers are usually controlled by separate protective relay systems, offering adjustable tripping current and time settings as well as allowing for more complex protection schemes.