Posted to News on 27th Jul 2016, 14:57
Eaton whitepaper outlines circuit protection strategies
Eaton has published its Circuit Protection - a vital backbone for your machine whitepaper, which advises machine builders how they can gain a competitive edge from implementing a successful circuit protection strategy. The whitepaper from the power management company outlines steps machine builders can take to ensure operator safety, improve machine uptime, productivity and ultimately profitability for them and their manufacturing OEM customers.
The paper discusses electrical fault conditions such as over-currents, residual or leakage currents, arcing faults, shock hazard and surges. It also describes how they can threaten a power system and its users. It goes on to review the possible consequences if no or non-sufficient circuit protection measures are in place to prevent such problems or limit their effects, in addition to highlighting applicable standards and products available.
Dr Peter Terhoeven, R&D Group Manager at Eaton says: "Choosing and sourcing the right protection components and balancing them against one another across an entire power distribution network is complex and challenging. Nevertheless, machine builders can bring a real competitive advantage to their offering if they can find a circuit protection component partner with sufficient breadth and depth of stock, matched by equally comprehensive global technical and logistics support. The issue of circuit protection can become a sales advantage instead of a design problem."
The whitepaper guides the machine builder through an area that's wide-ranging and complex. It shows that as well as enhancing safety for operators, the right circuit protection can eliminate or significantly reduce loss of production. This can be through nuisance tripping, power blackouts, equipment failure or damage due to let-through of excess electrical energy caused by overload currents, overvoltage or other reasons.
By having an appropriate circuit protection strategy, productivity and uptime is maximized by ensuring that if a fault develops, only the power circuit local to the fault is shut down; the rest of the system continues production without interruption. Correct protection also improves uptime for the affected circuit by interrupting power before it can cause serious and permanent damage.
The whitepaper is available free to download from www.eaton.eu/en/cp/gen, or to learn more about Eaton visit www.eaton.uk.com/electrical.
