Asset Monitoring Products

Circuit Breaker Testing

Camlin Energy's PROFILE P3 provides on-site Circuit Breaker Testing through ‘first trip’ profiling. This enables condition-based maintenance to reduce operating costs and extend asset life.

Preventing slow Circuit Breaker Trip: the challenge for asset managers

A slow circuit breaker trip, due to aging or poor maintenance can cause major problems for network operators, taking customers off supply. And a delay in the circuit breaker trip can cause high current faults to ‘cascade’ across the network, leading to:

  • Plant damage
  • Safety risks to operational staff
  • Costly financial penalties

Conventional Circuit Breaker timing tests, which require the circuit breaker to be removed from service, don't provide an accurate assessment of the Circuit Breaker condition. Defects which may lead to slow trip operations are often temporarily cleared during the first Circuit Breaker operation, making it difficult to assess how the Circuit Breaker would perform in real-world fault conditions.

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Capturing the True Condition of Circuit Breakers

Monitoring current flow through the trip coil offers essential clues about the readiness of a circuit breaker to trip. Measuring deviation from normal parameters helps pinpoint potential problems within the trip coil, DC circuit or operating mechanism where around 80% of defects occur.

A circuit breaker that is operating correctly will have a ‘signature’ profile. Deviations from this nominal profile can highlight potential problems due to electrical defects or mechanical issues such as lack of lubrication. Assessment of this deviation is achieved by comparing ‘first trip’ circuit breaker operation with a second or subsequent trips and overlaying the profiles for comparison.

PROFILE P3 allows for non-invasive measurement of the circuit breaker’s trip/close coil profile along with DC voltage and main contact time. This allows connections to a live circuit breaker to be made within a few minutes, capturing the critical first trip operation.

Cost-Effective and Efficient Monitoring of Circuit Breakers

Benefit to asset managers

PROFILE P3 provides a unique insight into the true condition of circuit breakers at all voltages, capturing the vital ‘first trip’ to show how the Circuit Breaker would perform in a real-life fault situation. Capturing the Circuit Breaker first trip gives asset managers an insight into the true condition of the circuit breaker, this leads to major benefits;

    • ​Improves circuit breaker performance (no more slow trips)​
    • Avoids damage to the electrical grid and reduces the safety risk due to arc blasts and explosions
    • Enables a condition-based circuit breaker maintenance strategy​
    • ​Reduces operational costs due to more efficient circuit breaker testing

      What can we analyze from profiling a circuit breaker​?

      • Detect if the circuit breaker operating time is ​
        outside limits due to the Trip/Close coil or main ​
        mechanism​
      • The state of ‘health’ of circuit breaker close and trip coil mechanisms
      • The condition of the circuit breaker DC supply and associated wiring
      • The presence of ‘sticky’ or faulty circuit breaker auxiliary contacts​
      • The Total Trip Time (relay + circuit breaker)

      Key features

      1. Powerful Onsite Analysis: PROFILE P3 can display and overlay up to 4 records in graphical form. This enables quick onsite analysis of potential circuit breaker defects by comparing a first trip or close profile to subsequent circuit breaker operations.
      2. Combined Protection Relay and Circuit Breaker Online Test: An enhanced version of the software enables both the protection relay and circuit breaker trip times to be captured.
      3. Multi-shot Mode: With this function PROFILE P3 is able to re-arm and capture multiple circuit breaker operations. This can be used for monitoring a circuit breaker during faults or SCADA initiated operations.
      4. Automated Comparison Function: This provides a clear pass/fail (green/red) indication by determining if the key parameters – Buffer, Acon, Mcon are outside user set tolerances between the first, second and third trip operations.

      Profile Test

      PROFILE P3 Benefits

      Cost icon

      Reduced Circuit Breaker maintenance costs

      Drives cost-effective maintenance strategies for asset managers based on condition-based circuit breaker assessment

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      Intuitive visual profiling

      Enables rapid onsite analysis of circuit breaker defects by comparing first trip or close profile with subsequent circuit breaker operations

      Costly penalties icon

      Avoid costly Regulatory penalties

      Pre-empt problems caused by slow circuit breaker trip operation causing supply loss, costly network equipment damage and potential penalties due to CI/CML.

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      Extended circuit breaker asset life

      Quick, simple trending of key circuit breaker key parameters allows operators to anticipate maintenance requirements and extend asset life.

      See the Complete Picture

      Integrated with PROFILE P3, REPLAYPRO software for PC is a powerful analysis tool that combines detection of circuit breaker defects with trending of performance against key parameters from profile records imported from the system. REPLAYPRO can be hosted on a central server, allowing circuit breaker profiling data to be shared with other uses across your organisation.

      REPLAYPRO software is an integral part of the PROFILE P3 system enabling efficient profile record storage, retrieval and analysis. It provides the critical link between the system and those within the organisation who need to access the data in order to effectively manage their assets.

      Replay Pro 2 817 x 460

      PROFILE P3 Documentation

      Learn more about our PROFILE P3 circuit breaker analyser

      PDF Profile P3 Brochure

      Download

      PDF Profile P3 Summary Sheet

      Download

      REPLAYPRO

      REPLAYPRO is the license-free software to analyse and manage the PROFILE data. Download the latest update directly from below -

      COMPRESSED REPLAYPRO

      Download

      Contact Us

      Contact us to find out more about how Profile P3 can improve the speed, accuracy and efficiency of circuit breaker monitoring and condition analysis.


      Knowledge Center

      Insight Capturing Circuit Breaker First Trip - White Paper

      Energy

      Insight Machine Learning Intelligence for Circuit Breaker Trip Coil Analysis

      Energy

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