How often should you test your circuit breakers and relays?

Recent example here. -Tripped a 3000A breaker for load reduction in a transformer prior to opening the primary switch. -When I attempted to close the breaker, nothing happened on the 4th charge cycle of the breaker (older GE mechanically actuated breaker) -upon inspection, found that the closing mechanism was nearly seized. Took some time working the mechanism back and forth, lubricating, and cleaning the breaker (racked out and removed from the cubicle of course) -ended up getting the breaker to function properly. After the fact found out that the breaker had not been maintained in 7 years. A good example of what a lack of preventative maintenance can do to your equipment!

When there is a large population of Circuit Breakers, time-based maintenance is not practical. Condition monitoring data can be used to prioritize maintenance. All important circuit breakers must be operated at least once in a year. Other circuit breakers depending on reliability standards of the organization may be operated once in two years and remaining circuit breakers may be operated once in three years to ensure that circuit breakers will operate correctly when really required.

testar relés e disjuntores desempenha um papel crucial na preserva??o da seguran?a e na eficiência dos sistemas elétricos. Enquanto os relés assumem a responsabilidade de proteger os equipamentos contra diversos tipos de falhas elétricas, como sobrecargas e curtos-circuitos, os disjuntores s?o encarregados de interromper a corrente elétrica em situa??es de emergência. Essas verifica??es regulares n?o apenas ajudam a identificar e corrigir possíveis problemas antes que causem danos significativos aos equipamentos, mas também mitigam riscos mais sérios, como acidentes elétricos, incêndios ou interrup??es no fornecimento de energia, garantindo assim a estabilidade e a confiabilidade do sistema elétrico.

It's must be cleaned of Dust & Carbon particles in 6 monthly,if it's operational daily,like in Compresser which has Star Delta Connection.

Circuit breakers and relays are a critical part of your power infrastructure. If there is a failure the consecquences can be catastrophic. It is so much better to test under controlled circumstances than to deal with a failure. You need to access your risk. Many small companies have just a few breakers and relays and a failure means a complete loss of productivity.

In theory, follow the manufacturer's advice for testing frequencies. It usually falls between 3 to 5 years, as you stated. In practice, it is often not feasible to respect the manufacturer's recommendations because the equipment needs to be down for testing. Operations will not shut down a bunch of equipment just for electrical testing. So I advise testing every 5 years, even if the manufacturer says 3 years. You should work with the operations schedule and perform testing during a planned outage.

a frequência para testar disjuntores e relés pode mudar conforme as normas do setor ou recomenda??es do fabricante, geralmente, faz os testes de manuten??o preventiva anualmente ou a cada dois anos para assegurar o funcionamento seguro do sistema elétrico.

Sorry, the 3-5 years is a recommendation from the manufacturer always with the caveat of environmental considerations increasing or decreasing the interval. I have seen pristine environments where 5 years could be a viable interval for even aged equipment. I have also seen applications and environments where 6 months incurs an unacceptable risk to unplanned downtime. Now the question becomes the cost of unplanned downtime vs. scheduled downtime. I have customers who have to discard 3 months of production if they experience an unplanned outage. A planned 8 hour outage can look pretty attractive to them if it assures continued production without unscheduled interruptions.

For circuit breaker testing the main test is of course functioning the breaker to open and close. It is important to test the breaker and relay as a whole. You should verify that the relay does in fact open the breaker. If there is a reclosure function on this breaker you need to verify that this works as well. The next thing is to test insulation of the main contacts in all positions and contact resistance. Also the control wiring should be insulation tested. One test that I think is pretty useless is timing. I'm referring to breakers less than 27 kv. I have never seen an issue caused by contact timing in 42 years. Next you need to clean contacts and lubricate mechanical mechanisms.

I would have thought that a (at least) yearly IR spectroscopy and vibrational spectroscopy should be carried out to assess for any anomalys thereby stowing thermal anomalies and also chatter and undue vibration in mechanical relays

Existem várias abordagens para testar disjuntores e relés. Um método comum é o teste de inje??o de corrente, onde uma corrente conhecida é injetada e comparada com a resposta esperada do dispositivo. O teste de inje??o de tens?o também é utilizado, aplicando uma tens?o controlada. Testes de funcionamento e sincronismo também s?o essenciais para garantir a coordena??o adequada. Além disso, testes de resistência e continuidade podem ser realizados para garantir a integridade elétrica. Lembre-se de seguir as normas e procedimentos específicos do fabricante. A manuten??o regular é crucial para garantir a confiabilidade do sistema elétrico.

Enhanced safety to maintenance employees that are required to perform resets and don't necessarily know the inherent risks in doing so. Building Management should be required to know this as a performance review of their responsibility.

You nailed all the benefits of testing. I want to add that testing is a generic term, but there are 3 types of testing, and each has different purposes: 1- Maintenance testing 2- Commissioning testing 3- Factory testing This article is obviously talking about maintenance testing; however, factory testing and commissioning also have huge benefits.

It’s been purported to have come from Dr. Ed Schweitzer that, at least as far as he’s concerned, “If you want to use my relay to calibrate your test set, be my guest.” @Thierry Julio Epassa can tell you a few things about properly programming SEL relays. For circuit breakers, follow the manufacturer’s instructions.

The key point is to test the circuit breaker when it is in service so as to capture the first trip. This will confirm how the circuit breaker would have performed during a fault condition and provide the opportunity to rectify any defect that would cause a slow trip or failure to trip. Often defects are mechanical in nature and will be temporarily cleared when a circuit breaker is tripped. So that is why conventional testing where the circuit breaker is removed from service can give a misleading impression that the circuit breaker is healthy.

One essential test is to check for partial discharge and visually inspect cable terminations. ir testing is not really worthwhile on hv equipment as there are no windows such as on lv breakers .