How the World's First Digital Circuit Breaker Could Completely Change Our Powered World (popularmechanics.com) 231
This week the world's first and only digital circuit breaker was certified for commercial use. The technology, invented by Atom Power, has been listed by Underwriters Laboratories (UL), the global standard for consumer safety. This new breaker makes power easier to manage and 3000 times faster than the fastest mechanical breaker, marking the most radical advancement in power distribution since Thomas Edison.
From a report: Picture the fuse box in your basement, each switch assigned to different electrical components of your home. These switches are designed to break a circuit during an electrical overload to protect your lights and appliances. When this happens, you plod down to your mechanical room and flick the switches on again. Now multiply that simple system in your home to city high rises and industrial buildings, which might have 250 circuit breakers on any given floor, each one ranging from 15 to 4000 amps at higher voltages. At this scale, the limitations and dangers of a manually controlled power system become much more evident -- and costly.
Ryan Kennedy, CEO of Atom Power, has been working to build a better electrical system since he began his career 25 years ago, first as an electrician and then as an engineer and project manager on large, high profile commercial electrical projects. His experienced based inquiry has revolved around a central assertion that analog infrastructure doesn't allow us to control our power the way we should be able to. That idea has led to some pretty critical questions: "What would it take to make power systems controllable?" and "Why shouldn't that control be built in to the circuit breaker itself?"
Ryan Kennedy, CEO of Atom Power, has been working to build a better electrical system since he began his career 25 years ago, first as an electrician and then as an engineer and project manager on large, high profile commercial electrical projects. His experienced based inquiry has revolved around a central assertion that analog infrastructure doesn't allow us to control our power the way we should be able to. That idea has led to some pretty critical questions: "What would it take to make power systems controllable?" and "Why shouldn't that control be built in to the circuit breaker itself?"
Yes, exciting (Score:5, Insightful)
I am looking forward to ransomware that shuts the power off to homes and businesses, this will be incredibly funny.
Re:Yes, exciting (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod this bad boy up! Exactly what I was thinking. A new IoT device to have poor security and open to vulnerabilities.
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Yeah, I was just going to come here to post a link to the /. article immediately above this one (https://it.slashdot.org/story/19/05/22/208246/hackers-are-holding-baltimores-government-computers-hostage). But he beat me to the idea, if not the link. Shucks.
Re:Yes, exciting (Score:5, Informative)
has been listed by Underwriters Laboratories (UL), the global standard for consumer safety.
They are the US standard for consumer safety... Global would be CE [wikipedia.org]
marking the most radical advancement in power distribution since Thomas Edison.
Thomas Edison popularized Lightbulbs. But his DC power distribution was shit. Westinghouse / Nikola Tesla's AC power system, with ease of transformation to higher voltage for lower loss over distance was more of a radical advancement than some lightbulbs.
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I guess you don't understand the difference between being UL listed and where UL owns a building. Being UL listed doesn't give you shit in most of the countries where it owns buildings. Owning a building in the country also doesn't mean UL is limited to 46 countries, they actually provide services across borders.
I did however send a device recently to our local UL office to get certified to an EN standard. Yeah it came back with a UL mark, but that is irrelevant and won't be printed on our product, we just
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Re:Yes, exciting (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up.
I have no doubt that this scenario will come to pass.
I may be an old fogey, but I feel strongly that some things shouldn't be automated or connected to the internet, or be remotely controllable for that matter.
I'd love to change my home over to gear like this and even see it mandated as standard construction code. And I'd change my position in a heartbeat if it could be demonstrated that this kind of thing could be done securely, but based on the track record of the last 10 years, that's simply not a realistic expectation.
No malicious hacker or prick will ever be able to screw with my personal electrical grid at home because the breakers are simple mechanical gizmos. These simple mechanical breakers have a proven track record of working reliably since they were patented in the mid 1920s.
Not everything should be connected to the net or be susceptible to control signals from some 12-year old scumbag on the other side of the planet.
But what do I know, right?
I'm sure we'll see this shit popping up all over, and the attendant problems will follow. Standby for the YouBeInTheDark virus or whatever catchy name they give it.
Re:Yes, exciting (Score:5, Funny)
I may be an old fogey, but I feel strongly that some things shouldn't be automated or connected to the internet, or be remotely controllable for that matter.
You and Commander Adama.
Agreed (Score:3)
The technology has around for nearly a century and has been working just fine. Great, now it has a microprocessor inside. How does it handle 30 years of uptime? Will it still function?
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The technology has around for nearly a century and has been working just fine. Great, now it has a microprocessor inside. How does it handle 30 years of uptime? Will it still function?
And how immune to voltage spikes and noise will it be? Will it withstand 30 years of power spikes and lightning strikes?
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I'm basically in agreement with you. I removed the programmable thermostats in my house and in my daughter's house for basically that reason (plus, I only program computers, I don't program thermostats). But I've also replaced enough broken circuit breakers to know they don't always survive spikes and lightning; I'm not sure 30 years is an expectable life. Whereas fuses--which my parents' house had--are (afaik) pretty much immune to that. (They aren't however immune to teenagers experimenting with electr
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I'm basically in agreement with you. I removed the programmable thermostats in my house and in my daughter's house for basically that reason (plus, I only program computers, I don't program thermostats).
Programmable thermostats are great to keep the house cool and night and when everyone is usually at work, and warmer in the times when people are at home (or the opposite in the cooling season). I would not want to go back to a non-programmable one that needs to be changed by hand frequently.
Now, I see little need and much downside to an internet-connected thermostat.
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Forgot to mention, my wife is retired. So there's no time in our house when we can count on there being no one home. Of course YMMV,since you're probably not an Old Fogy like me.
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Well, I am "foggier" than I would like to be. I find the daily night-time temp adjustment convenient and certainly a significant money-saver over leaving it at one set temperature.
Is your daughter's house also occupied all the time?
Additionally, most programmable thermostats can be adjusted for temporary changes and will then cycle back to the set program to allow one to punch up or down the temperature and then not need to remember to put it back to the "standard". I find this much more convenient than a s
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I am curious. Could this be implemented without connecting the circuit breakers to the internet? The meters could still be connected to the internet, just not the breakers.
Probably, but would they? There seems to be a frantic drive to connect everyfuckingthing to the internet- refrigerators, lighting, home appliances, ski lift gondolas (really), home heating controls, air conditioning, etc etc etc.
Just because something can be connected doesn't mean it should be connected. Yes, I'm aware of all the handy things that connecting this kind of stuff can do, but still...if you just absolutely have to connect some crap to the internet, secure it. Really, really secure it.
I mean rea
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Re:Yes, exciting (Score:4, Funny)
I am looking forward to ransomware that shuts the power off to homes and businesses, this will be incredibly funny.
All we know is money! Tik tak! Tik tak! Tik tak!
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Why? Is this on the internet? "Digital" does not mean "connected to the internet". If they do put it on the internet then that's a problem, but being on the internet is not an inherent property of a digital circuit breaker.
Utilities can already remotely shut off power to many houses for various reasons (the renter moved out, failure to pay bills, etc). We can shut off entire regions also without the expense of rolling out trucks (preventing cascading blackouts or fires).
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I'm with you. Cried every day for a month, memorized "He stopped loving her today." But that was before I met the woman I'm married to now, who will never do that to me. Hope you have that kind of happy ending too.
Ok, this has *nothing* to do with either slashdot or the topic of this post, but I'm saying it anyway. Go ahead and mod me down.
hey.. why not.. (Score:3, Insightful)
hook these bad boys up to the internets while we're at it.. what could possibly go wrong with internet-connected mains switches and circuit breakers?
Re:hey.. why not.. (Score:5, Interesting)
what could possibly go wrong with internet-connected mains switches and circuit breakers?
The power companies are Already doing it en-masse. My local POCO announced a 6 months ago that they would be installing Smart Meters on everyone's house in the entire state; they say it will improve quality of service and help them pinpoint power outages more quickly and know when power has been restored after events/outages (Which, such outages also seem ridiculously frequent in the past 2 years) -- And they'll charge an extra $5/month fee for the meter (Or we can opt out instead, but at cost $15/Month to opt-out), so no matter
what we want to do their new program will require us to pay more money every month to fund them putting these in.
I've seen videos where smart meters like these were taken apart -- the Smart Meters are made in China, and
the innerds look bare bones but do contain a cheap Normally Open electrically-controlled mains relay, so that the power company can turn off the power at will, and only the meter remains powered (by tapping mains before the switch).
Re:hey.. why not.. (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a hundred different meter makers out there, and they're ALL digital now since no one wants the 50s era mechanical dials that are not very accurate. If they are charging you $5 then you're getting ripped off because this is saving the utility a lot of money; complain to the utility and not the meter maker. The networking has much higher security than the typical brain dead consumer IoT crap. But every maker is different and quality varies. The anti smart-meter fad is about a decade old, time to get over it.
Second Post (Score:2)
Hyperbole much? (Score:2)
I got a chuckle with the line "the most radical advancement in power distribution since Thomas Edison".
When I RFTA, the advancement is a networked semiconductor circuit breaker which is, in all honesty, quite an advancement but when it comes right down to it, it means that somebody has to deal with the problem on a phone/computer screen rather than trudging down to a breaker panel. The basic functionality or operation of the breaker hasn't changed.
If you think that this is the most radical advancement in p
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Yeah that's basically what it is. I mean we've used PLC's in a simple mode for decades to do this, prior to that ye olde mechanical breakers did a perfectly fine job even in remote locations where you needed a fail-over, or where you're dealing with issues like back feed because of some gigantic fuckup or because the system remains partially energized(remember kids, always lockout and always check for live lines). It's not some radical earth shattering change, as you pointed out correctly it's simply the
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But anyone that doesn't think mechanical breakers aren't fast is buying into bullshit. Mechanical breakers are fast enough to disconnect on back feed problems prior to a surge and before it becomes a jacobs ladder that can damage equipment.
Fuses can interrupt a load in less than one-half cycle (at next zero passing). A circuit breaker could be 2-3 cycles. For this reason Arc-flash rating on devices protected by fuse are usually lower than those protected by equivalent circuit breaker. Fuses tend to fail open (safe), circuit breakers tend to fail closed (not-safe). I can't speak to the specifics of this design, other than I've seen more SCRs and IGBTs fail short than open.
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For comparison:
Square D QO breakers (residential) have trip times of less than 1 cycle for short circuit.
2+ cycle trip time is for coordinated systems or motor circuits.
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Heh, I've had a 25A IGBT physically explode in front of me when it failed short with collector-emitter punch-through. Enhancement mode MOSFETs tend to fail open, though.
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If you think that this is the most radical advancement in power distribution since (Mr. DC) Edison, you'll be amazed at what this fella Tesla accomplished with George Westinghouse.
Quoted for truth. Edison? For power distribution?
And /. continues its slide into irrelevance.
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His plan was to have a generator every couple-three miles.
It wasn't a great plan, but it was a power distribution plan.
How will these be connected is the big question... (Score:5, Interesting)
If these are standalone physical breakers with the e-Ink display as shown where one physically walks to it and pushes "1" or "0", that is just fine with me. Solid state breakers wouldn't wear out, would likely be able to take excessive power hits, and have a longer service life than mechanical ones.
However, if the circuit breakers fall into the IoT trap of connected to stuff, hell with that. I can see an attacker having a field day with something like that, either by flipping breakers off, putting a virtual penny in the fuse box, so if there is an overload, there is a fire... or just flipping the breakers off and on so quickly that it fries everything in the house, similar to plugging computer equipment into a Christmas light flasher.
If it is kept well away from interconnected networks, yes, this is a good thing. Otherwise, I'll be happy with the good ol' fashioned SWD rated stuff.
If they're not connected, what is the point? (Score:2)
I'm asking from the perspective of the article's author. Sure, a semiconductor will trip 3,000 times faster than an electromechanical one but what's the point if you have to trudge down to the electrical room and reset them manually?
So what if somebody can remotely control the power to your building, potentially shutting down businesses and maybe causing fires to happen?
Controlling the world by your phone, that's where it's at.
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Controlling the world by your phone, that's where it's at.
Thats where its at if you're a 13 year old on Adderall.
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Also, is there really a need for it to be that fast? AFCIs are already so quick to trip that the one time my friend accidentally took the dykes to the wrong piece of romex, the circuit went dark so quick it didn't even make a spark, or mark up the dykes.
I also work with some power switchgear (Rated for 1 Megawatt 3 phase, 2400VAC). The actual switching elements are electromagnetically controlled vacuum breakers. They can make or break a full load circuit in under 1/15th of a cycle (or some such) and their c
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Meh (Score:3)
The real problem in my mind is that a safety feature is routinely used for operational purposes. The breaker should be used to disconnect overloads. For disconnecting service during regular work, a separate switch (which could be remotely controlled) would make more sense to me.
What do I know, though? I'm not an electrician... I just have to explain why someone got shocked because someone else hit the wrong breaker to turn on some equipment.
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a separate switch (which could be remotely controlled) would make more sense to me.
No, disconnects used for Lockout/Tagout should absolutely never be remote controllable. The only person who should ever be able to operate the switch is the person who put their own padlock on that disconnect. When I'm working on a piece of equipment or anything else that has the possibility of doing me serious harm, need to have the confidence that because the key is in my pocket, no one else can turn it back on again.
Nice, but let's not go crazy... (Score:5, Insightful)
...the most radical advancement in power distribution since Thomas Edison...
Ok, sure, it's nice to have a breaker that switches faster, but let's not go crazy. We've had solid-state switching for almost three quarters of a century. There's a reason why no one got a circuit approved for AC power interruption. It's not because it's inherently difficult - the SCR has been around for half a century and a dimmer switch is essentially an electronic circuit breaker that uses one to pulse power on and off very quickly. No, the reason why we haven't had solid state circuit breakers is that no one really cared. Electro-mechanical is easily made, works well, and clamps fast enough. In most cases, you don't want a circuit breaker tripping at the first whisper of over-current. And for those types of electronic equipment where you do need reaction times that fast, you generally have a crowbar circuit that protects the equipment until the breaker trips.
So, sure, *pat* *pat* good engineer, but with respect, this isn't even worthy of mentioning in the same paragraph with greats like Edison or Tesla.
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True but remember that this is being reported in Popular Mechanics, probably right before the preview of the new 2020 cars. Physical Review it ain't.
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SCR's are not circuit breakers, if the supply voltage exceeds the breakover voltage, the SCR will start conducting again. Additionally silicon based relays have to be turned on/off on the zero-crossings or they will continue conducting and they're not guaranteed to turn off at the zero crossing, multiple consecutive waves can still pass after the gate has been turned 'off'.
You can see that occasionally in electronic dimmers on a scope under load, they will suddenly conduct an entire waveform even though the
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I think you are confusing circuit breaker with GFCI or AFCI. A circuit breaker does not protect someone sticking their fingers in the socket, they only prevent the building from catching fire in case of overload.
Current code in many jurisdictions requires AFCI/GFCI and tamper-resistant outlets for accessible outlets in new construction or renovations but still many electricians for residential work simply don't bother getting a permit/inspection.
Is this even safe? (Score:2)
I would be concerned that some kind of power fluctuation could zap the circuitry in the breaker and cause it to malfunction, which is much less likely with mechanical breakers. What happens if the switching component (a triac maybe?) fails short? I would think that would also be less likely with mechanical breakers.
Also, if the thing is network accessible, wouldn't it also need a power supply? What happens if that fails? Lots of questions...
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I would be concerned that some kind of power fluctuation could zap the circuitry in the breaker and cause it to malfunction, which is much less likely with mechanical breakers. What happens if the switching component (a triac maybe?) fails short? I would think that would also be less likely with mechanical breakers.
Also, if the thing is network accessible, wouldn't it also need a power supply? What happens if that fails? Lots of questions...
As if this is new. At sizes larger than what you'd find in a residential circuit panel, circuit breakers they are rarely a purely mechanical bi-metalic strip design. Especially once you get into medium/ high voltage like you'd find in a distribution/ Transmission system. Most * have an electronic "trip" unit, which is programmable (frequently just with dials, sometimes a full LCD control). The electronics monitor the current through a Current Transformer [wikipedia.org] and once a specified threshold is reached (long time,
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The problem is that they are new to building level distribution. There isn't much crossover between people who work on the grid and people who work in buildings. Mistakes will be made.
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I'm thinking there will be a lot of cases where they realize after the fact that the circuit that powers the control system shouldn't be on a breaker that needs the control system...
To bad we didn't have these in the '90s (Score:2)
John Arnold and Robert Muldoon might still be alive.
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or frank grimes. poor ol' grimey.
Software license required (Score:5, Informative)
Geeze - check the pilot plans. They include a "software license" - https://www.atompower.com/orde... [atompower.com]. So, yeah, there is the 1:100000 chance of some fault taking out power for my floor or building. But in 99.9% of the cases that is still cost-averaged cheaper than one of these things. Plus, you know, a frigging annual license.
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Almost... (Score:2)
These switches are designed to break a circuit during an electrical overload to protect your lights and appliances.
Actually, their prime purpose is to protect your house and wiring from either too many appliances on line or a failed appliance that draws too much current. The only reason they would catch an over-volt is if something was on that drew more current than the breaker limit because of it. I.e., your $4000 8k TV that isn't "on" draws very little current, and feeding it 500V won't make it draw enough to trip the breaker, but it could cause damage to it. (In the US, a vast majority of stuff is "120-240V", so they
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Um, no. Mains generators are required to regulate the line frequency to very small tolerances so that connected timing equipment remains accurate,
This has nothing to do with timing. Circuit breakers trip because of current, not voltage or frequency.
Overvoltage situations occur when the system isn't able to compensate for a very large load (such as a factory) going offline.
And a circuit breaker will not protect your precious equipment from overvoltage unless that overvoltage causes it to draw more current than the breaker allows. Your twaddle about "line frequency" has nothing to do with anything.
Oh, wait - from TFA: (Score:3)
Atom Power’s next challenge is to reduce the thermal losses sustained by their digital circuit breakers to make them as efficient as their mechanical counterparts.
So, not quite ready from prime-time then.
NEXT!
And by "completely change"... (Score:2)
... we mean "burn down".
3000 times faster... (Score:2)
Not sure what this is supposed to mean or why that would be an advantage. Commercial breakers are adjustable to allow for short term overloads so that motors and other large loads can start. Speed is not a big deal for a circuit breaker. You also probably have to have at least a half cycle to even detect an overload. There are 360 half cycles through a 3-phase circuit breaker per second (at 60Hz). It certainly does not take 8 seconds for a commercial breaker to open...
Solid state switches are used... (Score:2)
Step backwards for security. (Score:2)
Really smart and really stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
Smart: Digital circuitry is much faster. more flexible, and potentially more reliable. The real advantage would be the ability to easily switch between power sources when more than one is available (grid connection / solar panels).
Stupid: Control your circuit breakers from your ipad, which would mean connecting your breaker panel to the IOT. How long before the ransomware folks hack in, turn off the power, and demand money to turn it back on? (Big bucks for an office building, less for your house.) Or much worse, how long before the really evil folks hack in, disable the breakers, and use some other IOT appliances to burn down the building?
We're already worried about terrorists hacking into the national power grid. This would multiply their opportunities by thousands or more.
The real innovation (Score:3, Interesting)
Solid state switching is not new. Tesla Model 3 replaced all car fuses in car with such "digital circuit breakers", granted for DC not AC, but not that far off. The real innovation here is the service business model - the breakers now require a software license, which means you can now have a "breaker as a service" model when you pay annually, monthly, whatever. When your lights go out, it could be because you forgot to pay you breaker bill.
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I highly doubt anyone would want to go to market with CBaaS, builders aren't stupid, they want something to run for the next 25 years.
Also, 'e-fuses' are only for (very) low voltage where there is no chance of over-voltage (eg. your 12VDC battery won't ever deliver 1200VDC). For AC voltages e-fuses are a BIG difference. Silicon is simply bad at switching HVAC, it's not necessarily impossible but it won't withstand the same abuse from the net a physical switch can withstand on a daily basis.
...because the overload was the problem (Score:2)
The need to manually flip the breaker is annoying, certainly. But manually flipping it isn't the problem. The problem is the overload.
The breaker, technically, isn't at all necessary. Under normal conditions, and normal tolerances, and normal usage patterns, it'll never trip and you'll never need to manually flip it. You'll never need to interact with it at all.
But it's there anyway. It's there as a big giant fail-safe. It's there as a guarantee. It's there as a life-saving, last-ditch-effort, plan z
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Just this year, my workplace have had:
- an RCD on a main fuseboard that tripped and refused to un-trip. No amount of isolation of the circuit would let it re-set. Electrician had to replace, says it's about the four or fifth he's done on-site in the last year or so.
- a 100kVA upgrade to the main inlet to the site in a huge self-contained building of its own (the size of a large shed) with all kinds of tech, USB controls, firmware, programming, digital displays, load-balancing, etc. That's what was suppli
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Sounds like another round of all-this-effort-to-monitor-and-to-quantize-in-order-to-save-money-by-using-less that just winds up forgetting that it costs more money to monitor and quantize than it ever did by just using more. Broken hardware, bad devices, and clueless diagnostics are par for the coarse when it comes to complexity. That's not the fault of the complexity, it's the fault of the designer. In my experience, using more and simpler is both cheaper and easier than using less.
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There are various issues with your contractors if this keeps happening. You should also verify whether you got your work properly permitted and inspected, it sounds like the master electrician(s) and engineers just signed off on shoddy work.
But as to your story, circuit breakers only work when they are correctly installed, yes, very old circuit breakers aren't always guaranteed to work and bad connections in the panel will lead to overheating because classic circuit breakers only protect against over-curren
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In my city, every house has a breaker box just inside where the mains connection comes in. On the outside is nothing more than the meter. Perhaps there's an outside safety shut-off that I've not seen.
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Service Disconnects (including Mains) only needs to be near the first point of entry. Outside and inside are both valid. Note: inside needs to be fed through conduit (additional rules and exceptions apply).
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Uh.. Most breaker boxes are on the OUTSIDE of the house.... If you have one on the inside it's probably a sub panel.. I don't think it's even legal to have the main breaker box anywhere but outside right where the mains connection comes in..
The relevant code (in the US) for this is the NEC.
NEC 230.70(A)(1) says: "The service disconnecting means shall be installed at a readily accessible location either outside of a building or structure or inside nearest the point of entrance or the service conductors."
In places with mild climates it's cheap/easy to use a "Combination Service Entrance Device" which has the meter, main disconnect and the breakers all in one box that's mounted outside.
In places where you get a lot of snow I believe it's fairly c
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Do many people have breakers flipping frequently? I think I've reset one once in the last ten years.
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The only time I've had one flip is when I've plugged in three space heaters in the garage's one circuit to dry paint faster.
But I imagine that many people routinely plug in too many things into old houses.
"Commercial Only" (Score:2)
GTFO.
I've been looking for this so I can remotely turn off my water heater at my 2nd home.
(Yes, I know there's other ways to do it, but a controllable breaker is the easiest).
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Better to use a contactor controlled by an isolated relay attached to GPIO of some bitty box (think RasPi or similar). Power the contactor relay with the same circuit as the computer. All of these are off the shelf components you can buy online. The contactor should be near the water heater but the rest can be a 200 ft or more from the contactor (assuming 120V control voltage).
The breaker has other things to do.
breakers (Score:2)
I just want breakers that show me the current used load of the circuit. That would be amazingly useful to find energy inefficient devices around the house.
Currently you have to connect a watt meter to everything you want to measure independently. I saw some products but they all require the cloud to work, which sucks. I just want a plain readout on the panel, per circuit, ideally just a drop in replacement breaker.
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to protect your lights and appliances (Score:2)
Summary Fail (Score:2)
Picture the fuse box in your basement, each switch assigned to different electrical components of your home. These switches are designed to break a circuit during an electrical overload to protect your lights and appliances.
Wrong. The CB's in your house protect the wiring and other components, not the attached devices. The attached devices are supposed to be UL listed and safe to use in a correctly provisioned circuit. If they draw too much current, the breaker trips to protect the wires in the wall and the receptacle.
Fuses protect electrical circuits? (Score:2)
It's for razorsharp technical analysis such as the above is what keeps me coming back here.
“Now I have the ability to connect things like iPhones and iPads for remote power management, which increases safety and improves efficiency.“
What happens if ther
Easy to answer (Score:2)
"Why shouldn't that control be built in to the circuit breaker itself?"
Because the circuit breaker is a failsafe device that absolutely must work. Complicating it by trying to load more functionality onto it is a bad, bad, bad idea.
Re:No need for this (Score:4, Insightful)
The point of these seems to be to allow remote control, no doubt from an iPhone app over the internet. In fact it would not be hard to arrange remote control of an electro-mechanical breaker - the basis of such a thing already exists in the form of a contactor which is simply a big relay with built-in arc suppression. Add a current detection circuit to a contactor, and a remote control switch, and there you have it.
I always thought that circuit breakers required local setting because it's a good idea for the maintenance guy to be required to go and actually take a look at what might have caused the thing to trip. You know, it might be a fire or something.
Re:No need for this (Score:5, Insightful)
I always thought that circuit breakers required local setting because it's a good idea for the maintenance guy to be required to go and actually take a look at what might have caused the thing to trip.
This! AND Safety! The breaker is commonly used as the safety disconnect for performing electrical maintenance under Lock-out Tag-out to prevent someone else coming behind and changing the control: turning on the power switch, gas/water/drain valve, etc: not realizing that they will endanger a maintenance worker -- a physical mechanical thing is needed for LOTO.
The worker preparing to do maintenance switches off the breaker and places a mechanical device on the breaker which includes a padlock with a warning tag, and then attaches and secures a padlock to the device (Which prevents the device from being removed, and the breaker cannot be turned back on without removing the device) --- the maintenance worker puts the key in their pocket while they are working.
When multiple people are doing maintenance on things controlled at the same point: an additional mechanism is used, and each worker hangs a padlock. Power cannot be restored until every worker users their key to remove the lock.
I'm afraid with digitally-controlled switches. there's bound to be mistakes.... There's just nothing quite as reliable and assured at physically ensuring that controls will not be changed by locking it disconnected, and having a physical key required to change that --- with a physically placed warning sticker.
Imagine a digital equivalent, where a software glitch occurs: the computer reboots, or someone's app forgets the number of people doing maintenance on that circuit, etc.
Re:No need for this (Score:4, Informative)
The summary seems to gloss over it, but controllable (branch circuit and distribution) have been around for over 20 years.
Presumably what this adds to the equation is an easier process for digitally manipulating the trip characteristics— pick-up current, time delays, etc., and operate as a solid state switch. This can enhance safety when a circuit is not expected to have inrush, or in abnormal operation. This can be helpful for electrical safety, limiting arc flash energy.
Re:No need for this (Score:5, Informative)
What's wrong with mechanical breakers?
You know how when the East coast goes dark because the sundry public utilities spent all their revenue on executive bonuses and union retiree bennies and sensitivity coordinators so that eventually some neglected power line sags and shorts on a tree and the trip cascades over 5 states? Part of the problem there is the slow reaction time of breakers to isolate the load. If the system could react fast enough to get ahead of the cascade the outage would be much smaller and the damage done by sudden load increases could be reduced. So instead of a pathetic domino failure that takes three days to recover the outage would be isolated and quickly corrected.
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Part of the problem there is the slow reaction time of breakers to isolate the load. If the system could react fast enough to get ahead of the cascade the outage would be much smaller
Trip times are a specification. Choose a faster-reacting breaker, AND you have another problem:
the breaker trips more quickly, but it was unnecessary - just a brief current spike or "almost short" that quickly cleared.
Now instead of your quicker-reacting breaker stopping a cascade: Your quicker-reacting breaker is about
Breaker trip times (Score:3)
Indeed. When a breaker is rated :"C20" the 20 is amps, but the C is the tolerance for temporary overloads, like when a motor starts. Old fashioned wire fuses have this by default.
The East cost blackout was BECAUSE of the computers that control the system. I suggest that more of them may not be the solution. The amazing thing was that it took them days to turn it all back on again. And there was no major failure, just one line.
It goes without saying that these computer systems will be useless once they
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Breakers that large can only operate so fast. Here's [youtube.com] a video demonstrating.
Meanwhile, voltage changes travel at the speed of light, what kind of signalling do you hope to use to get ahead of it?
The breakers used on the grid are already controllable through SCADA. Potential vulnerabilities in the SCADA network are already a serious cybersecurity/cyberwarfare worry.
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"voltage changes travel at the speed of light": Some of the answers here https://www.quora.com/What-is-... [quora.com] suggest that this is not quite true for electricity copper, that the speed of the signal (voltage change) is 95-97% of c. (Other answers claim it's c, and I'm not qualified to say who's right, but the posters who sound more knowledgeable are saying .95-.97.)
High tension lines are usually made of aluminum alloy, not copper; I don't know what the speed of voltage changes in Al is as opposed to Cu, but I
Re:No need for this (Score:5, Informative)
Meanwhile, voltage changes travel at the speed of light
Power systems have reactance. Both inductive and capacitive reactance emerges and is deliberately employed throughout power systems. Huge capacitors are used to improve power factor and snub transients. The ubiquitous transformer is literally coupled inductors, often the size of buildings. Transients do not propagate at SOL through these elements.
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What's wrong with mechanical breakers? They've worked just fine without issue up until now. We really need to stop this mental illness of needing to make everything these days require ICs and software just for controlling something as simple as a light switch.
Yea, but what about all the brilliant minds out there hungry for an IPO?
Think of the shareholders!
Re:No need for this (Score:5, Interesting)
They require mechanical arms to throw them
No, they don't. They can be stored energy (spring), magnetically tripped. Or magnetically tripped and closed, much like a relay. In either case, the control can be solid state. And often digital. This sort of technology has been available for utility and industrial applications for many years from SEL [wikipedia.org], Siemens [wikipedia.org] and others. The only differences I can see are that the technology has been re-packaged to provide similar features in consumer grade equipment. And an attempt to replace electromechanical power control with solid state. Which is still a work in progress.
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Re:Hackers (Score:4, Insightful)
Literally the next post on the front page is about a ransomware attack against a city government... but let's go ahead and implement this well thought out new technology on a broad scale!
Re: (Score:2)
that was my first thought. retrofitting the panel is going to be a code nightmare.