An Efficient Solid State Circuit Breaker for Low Voltage Circuit Protection

The general trend in electrical appliances is to go for electrical equivalents of mechanical or electromechanical gadgets. One of the long standing electronic component is the circuit breaker, a protective device that trips the ac supply once the current through the system goes beyond the rated value. In this paper an all electronic circuit breaker using bidirectional switch is demonstrated. The operation of bidirectional switch for low voltage applications in different operating conditions analyzed to determine the limitations of this design. The protection from short circuit and over voltage is also demonstrated Bidirectional ac switches with Triacs, IGBTs are commercially available however bi direction switch with MOSFETs is a new approach with two transistors and a simple resistor to identify the fault on the load side in order to achieve a fast turn off time .