Retrofitting of release in Air Circuit Breaker

It is seen that in the older supply system the Air Circuit Breakers (ACBs) provided for the protection are having thermal magnetic release or static release installed in it.

These release takes much more time to trip on faults as compared to the recently upgraded Microprocessor based release.Further in case of thermal magnetic release a separate module is required for the protection against earth fault.

From the economic point of view all ACBs which are having the said releases cannot be replaced with the new ACBs as it would incur a huge capital investment.

As an alternative what can be done is to replace/retrofit the existing thermal or static release with the Microprocessor based release.This can be done at a reduced cost as it will help in the optimization of the system.

Keeping in view that there could be more than one make of ACBs installed in a system and the release of every make of ACB differs in some aspect, matching the various parameters of these release with a single release is quite a matter of concern.

If a single release can do the required work then the retrofitting of these primitive types of release can be done easily.