Class - IX Section-A To E Subject-Work Experience Topic-Electrical Circuit Breaker & ELCB

Class -IX
Section-A to E
Subject-Work Experience
Topic-Electrical Circuit Breaker & ELCB
What is Circuit Breaker?

An electrical circuit breaker is a switching device which can be operated
manually and automatically for controlling and protecting an electrical power
system. As the modern power system deals with huge currents, special attention
should be given during designing of a circuit breaker to ensure it is able to safely
interrupt the arc produced during the closing of a circuit breaker. This was the
basic definition of circuit breaker.
Earth Leakage Circuit Breaker or ELCB

If any current leaks from any electrical installation, there must-be any insulation
failure in the electrical circuit, it must be properly detected and prevented
otherwise there may be a high chance of electrical shock if-anyone touches the
installation. An earth leakage circuit breaker does it efficiently. Means it detects
the earth leakage current and makes the power supply off by opening the
associated circuit breaker. There are two types of earth leakage circuit breaker,
one is voltage ELCB and other is current ELCB.
Voltage Earth Leakage Circuit Breaker

The working principle of voltage ELCB is quite simple. One terminal of the
relay coil is connected to the metal body of the equipment to be protected against
earth leakage and other terminal is connected to the earth directly.
If any insulation failure occurs or live phase wire touches the metal body, of the
equipment, there must be a voltage difference appears across the terminal of the
coil connected to the equipment body and earth. This voltage difference
produces a current to flow the relay coil.
If the voltage difference crosses, a predetermined limit, the current through the
relay becomes sufficient to actuate the relay for tripping the associated circuit
breaker to disconnect the power supply to the equipment. The typicality of this
device is, it can detect and protect only that equipment or installation with which
it is attached. It cannot detect any leakage of insulation in other parts of the
system.
Current ELCB or RCCB or Residual Current Circuit Breaker
The working principle of current earth leakage circuit breaker or RCCB is also
very simple as voltage operated ELCB but the theory is entirely different and
residual current circuit breaker is more sensitive than ELCB.
Actually, ELCBs are of two kinds, but it is general practice to refer voltage based
ELCB as simple ELCB. And current based ELCB is referred to as RCD or RCCB.
Here one CT (Current Transformer) core is energized from both phase wise and
neutral wire.
Single Phase Residual Current ELCB. The polarity of the phase winding and
neutral winding on the core is so chosen that, in normal condition mmf of one
winding opposes that of another. As it is assumed that, in normal operating
conditions the current goes through the phase wire will be returned via neutral
wire if there’s no leakage in between. As both currents are same, the resultant
mmf produced by these two currents is also zero-ideally.
The relay coil is connected with another third winding wound on the CT core as
secondary. The terminals of this winding are connected to a relay system. In
normal operating condition there would not be any current circulating in the
third winding as here is no flux in the core due to equal phase and neutral
current. When any earth leakage occurs in the equipment, there may be part of
phase current passes to the earth, through the leakage path instead of returning
via neutral wire. Hence the magnitude of the neutral current passing through the
RCCB is not equal to phase current passing through it.
Three Phase Residual Current Circuit Breaker or Current ELCB. When this
difference crosses a predetermined value, the current in the third secondary
winding of the core becomes sufficiently high to actuate the electromagnetic
relay attached to it.
This relay causes tripping of the associated circuit breaker to disconnect the
power supply to the equipment under protection. Residual current circuit
breaker is sometimes also referred as residual current device (RCD) when we
consider the device by disassociating the circuit breaker attached to RCCB. That
means, the entire parts of RCCB except circuit breaker are referred as RCD.

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Class -IX

What is Circuit Breaker?

Earth Leakage Circuit Breaker or ELCB

Voltage Earth Leakage Circuit Breaker

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