"Bryan Burr" <bjburr@mwheli.com> wrote:

That is amazing! But I have a question: What is the acronym ECB?

As has already been pointed out: ECB = Electronic Circuit Breaker.  Rather than using a fuse (a piece of wire that heats and melts) or a circuit breaker (a bi-metal strip that heats/bends and unlatches a switch), an ECB uses an electronics circuit to monitor the current draw and shut off power to the load when the current exceeds a threshold.

If properly designed, ECBs have many advantages over fuses and breakers.  They are invariably lighter than CBs, can have very accurate break profiles, can be designed to be intelligently reset, can be remotely reset from a remotely located panel, can be designed to keep track of events leading up to the fault and a host of other very desirable features that can reduce  maintenance costs.  But all of this comes at a price of significantly more complexity, significantly higher initial design cost, significantly higher certification cost and most probably higher production cost.  They *CAN* be just as reliable as CB/fuses or even more so, but only *IF* they are properly designed.  That is a huge *IF* that is much easier said than done.

Regards,

Hamid