Ultra Fast Acting Electronic Circuit Breaker using pic microcontroller

Ultra fast acting electronic circuit breaker is a such type a of circuit breaker which makes and breaks the power circuits with ultra fast acting response as compared to conventional circuit breakers such as MCB and MCCB. If we talk about conventional circuit breakers, these circuit breakers are temperature based circuit breakers which have lever strip mechanical mechanism. They have very low tripping time and this time depends upon the percentage of overload. In short these are very incredible with sensitives loads and circuits as well as their cost is also much high, especially, if we talk about dc circuit breaker. So many electronic circuit breakers are available in market, but they do not have an ultra fast acting response as well as they are not so much efficient and reliable.

Here we have designed an electronic circuit breaker that is called an ultra fast acting electronics circuit breaker. This ultra fast acting electronics circuit breaker has ultra fast acting response during overload, short circuit or any emergency condition and has LCD display for showing circuit condition. This electronic circuit breaker has designed with help of step down AC transformer, bridge rectifier, voltage regulator, comparator, power electronic components such as MOSFET, LCD display, relays and microcontroller PIC18F452 belongs to pic family. The block diagram of this ultra fast acting electronics circuit breaker with all their essential components is show in figure 1.

Block Diagram of Ultra Fast Acting Electronic Circuit Breaker

Here is the block diagram of this ultra fast acting electronics circuit breaker with all their essential components is,

Figure 1 The Block Diagram of Ultra Fast Acting Electronic Circuit Breaker

Working Principle of Ultra Fast Acting Electronics Circuit Breaker

This ultra fast acting electronics circuit breaker works on the principle of voltage drops in a series element and these voltage drops are directly proportional to the load current and for this purpose a very low value resistor is connected in this electronic circuit breaker. Because, these drops voltage are ac therefore these converted into dc voltage before comparing these voltages with preset voltages and this work is done through comparator. Because this electronic circuit breaker is directly coupled with 230 V ac therefor these ac voltages are firstly stepped down to 9 or 6V ac with the help of step down ac transformer and then these are converted into dc with the help of bridge rectifier. These rectified voltages are regulated to 5 or 6V dc with help of voltage regulator LM7805. This ultra fast acting electronics circuit breaker mostly consists of electronics and power electronics components therefore these electronic components such as LCD display and microcontroller are powered up with the help this voltage regulator.

Similarly, power electronics components are directly powered up with connected load through a power relay. Here for the demonstration purposes we shell check this ultra fast acting electronics circuit breaker after connecting two lamps at the output side this electronic circuit breaker. When this ultra fast acting electronics circuit breaker is switched on after connecting one lamp at output side then it works normally and shows normal working condition on LCD display. Similarly, when we switched on the second load then this circuit breaker switched off the output load permanently and shows over load at LCD display then the user can easily understand that the circuit is overload. This switching off time is so fast we can say this could be in micro second and we can increase or decrease this time through microcontroller programming. PIC18F452 Microcontroller is the main controller of this ultra fast acting electronics circuit breaker which is programmed in c language with the help of mikroc for pic software and is interfaced with LCD display and comparator.

Applications and Advantages of Ultra Fast Acting Electronic Circuit Breaker

1. This ultra fast acting electronic circuit breaker could be installed in commercial, industrial, domestic and sensitive building such as research centers and grid station etc.
2. This electronic circuit breaker could be also used in sensitive equipment’s.
3. This ultra fast acting electronics circuit breaker has very short tripping time as compared to other circuit breakers.
4. It is more efficient and reliable as compared to other circuit breakers.
5. It is less costly as compared to other circuit breakers.