Have you ever thought of what is a circuit breaker? And what it does to your house? Here is a very simplified explanation to all your queries.
Where can you find a Circuit Breaker?
Usually a circuit breaker is installed in the electrical service panels from where the electricity enters your house. That is, it can be located on external wall or in the garage of your house.
Circuit Breaker
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What is a Circuit Breaker?
As the name suggests, a circuit breaker is an electrical switch that is in charge of protecting a circuit from unpredicted electrical mishaps like short circuit or power overload. With technology advancements, various different classifications of circuit breakers have been made:
- Common trip circuit breaker
- Low voltage circuit breaker
- High voltage circuit breaker
- Magnetic circuit breaker
- Thermal magnetic circuit breaker
- Disconnecting circuit breaker
- Medium voltage circuit breaker
- High voltage circuit breaker
- Earth leakage circuit breaker
- Carbon dioxide high voltage circuit breaker
History of Circuit Breakers
The origin of circuit breaker dates back to 1879 when Thomas Edison applied for the patent of a device that is considered as the earlier form of this circuit breaker. However, modern day circuit breaker was patented in 1924 by Brown, Boveri & Cie (BBC) company.
How does a circuit breaker work?
In modern world, a circuit breaker has become a savior device without which one can’t think of building a safe house.
The basic concept behind a circuit breaker is very simple. When it senses overload in power capacity or some kind of malfunction, the circuit breaker will just disconnect the power, preventing the wires from burning up and setting house on fire. The main advantage of a circuit breaker over a fuse, is that it doesn’t need to be replaced. You can just switch it on to bring it back to life.
In short, a circuit breaker is mainly responsible for a single job which is to just cut the power supply whenever electric current reaches unsafe level.
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