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

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.

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PROFILE P3 Benefits

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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

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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.

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PROFILE P3 Documentation

Learn more about our PROFILE P3 circuit breaker analyser

REPLAYPRO

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

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.


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