History of Solid State Breakers
History of Solid State Breakers
(OP)
This is more geared towards the electrical power engineers who might know... Given that in the grand scheme of things, ICs and the digital age is a relatively new thing, and from my own experience, it seems that solid state breakers with removable trip units and plugs are a new item in power engineering. I was hoping that someone would take a stab at identifying a bit of how they developed and how recently they have become mainstream.
It still seems like price wise there may be some headway left to make, but from my field experience from what I can tell, it seems as though a modular design on a separate trip unit is maybe something that has happened in the last ~40 years, although it looks like the original trip units were either analog or electromechanical. The existing trip units that are popular nowadays are probably just a CT into an ADC into a controller, and then signal out to trip the breaker. But this is one of the few fields electrically, that was already firmly in place and established before the advent of digital. In other words, one of the few fields where digital did not lead the way, but it is still an electrical field. There's a few others that come to mind, (things that involve electromagnetics: radar, imaging, etc), but few and far between. Power distribution strikes me as a large scale endeavor that is very dependent on a lot of knowledgable people to design and maintain but it's also a very slow moving field, it seems. Big investments in infrastructure mean heavy planning and slow moving standards, compared to say, fabless IC design.
It's doubtful many of the power gurus will be around here but I wasn't sure if this should be in there or in the history section. Thanks
It still seems like price wise there may be some headway left to make, but from my field experience from what I can tell, it seems as though a modular design on a separate trip unit is maybe something that has happened in the last ~40 years, although it looks like the original trip units were either analog or electromechanical. The existing trip units that are popular nowadays are probably just a CT into an ADC into a controller, and then signal out to trip the breaker. But this is one of the few fields electrically, that was already firmly in place and established before the advent of digital. In other words, one of the few fields where digital did not lead the way, but it is still an electrical field. There's a few others that come to mind, (things that involve electromagnetics: radar, imaging, etc), but few and far between. Power distribution strikes me as a large scale endeavor that is very dependent on a lot of knowledgable people to design and maintain but it's also a very slow moving field, it seems. Big investments in infrastructure mean heavy planning and slow moving standards, compared to say, fabless IC design.
It's doubtful many of the power gurus will be around here but I wasn't sure if this should be in there or in the history section. Thanks





RE: History of Solid State Breakers
There are some very good retrofit units available from many different manufactures, URC's AC PRO is all digital, no moving parts, many different programable trip functions and costs a fraction of the OEM's retrofit kits.
Thats just some basics off the top of my head, I can give more exact dates if you want, but it will take a while to compile all the dates.
Do you have a more specific question?
RE: History of Solid State Breakers
How about SCADA systems? How about generators? I would love more information on approximate market size, any/all big players in the market (and history of mergers, deaths, etc). I find all of this very interesting.
It's tough to imagine a world without certain things, but in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't very long ago that we didn't have a laundry list of things that we take for granted nowadays. Pretty cool time to be alive, and to be an engineer, in my opinion.
RE: History of Solid State Breakers
RE: History of Solid State Breakers
Concerning the breakers questions I was asking, I have found from my experience in the field and doing coordination studies thus far, that we are not very far removed from a time where things were so incredibly unorganized and I really see where the 'walked both ways in the snow' kind of mindset came from. Looking at older analog relays and the lack of ability to track down information, it's pretty amazing if you think about the layers of inefficiency that have been removed from every field because of the advances in IT and information gathering. What I mean is, for instance take a look at SKM or ETAP software nowadays. Any manufacturer of a solid state breaker or thermal magnetic breaker is going to have information available so that if you see one in the field, you know exactly what it is and can use it. Whereas, I have come across vintage equipment that seems to be right at the edge (or before) the transition to the more modern digital age, and it's very tough to make sense of sometimes.