PROFILE

Condition Based Maintenance for Circuit Breakers

The correct operation of a Circuit Breaker is critical to any electricity network especially during fault conditions. A slow tripping circuit breaker results in unnecessary disruptions to electricity supplies and can cause damage to plant and equipment.

Often the problem that caused a slow trip is temporarily cleared during the first trip operation so cannot easily be detected by traditional diagnostic testing procedures. Therefore Capturing the First-Trip Operation is essential to effective circuit breaker diagnostics.

profile p3 offers a cost effective solution by enabling:

• Fast and simple online test
• Capture vital first-trip operation
• Onsite analysis of breaker defects
• Efficiently target critical resources
• Minimize outage times
• Many Key Features for the modern utility

profile p3 along with Replay Pro provide powerful diagnostic tools for analysing:

• Main contact operation
• Auxiliary contact operation
• Trip and close coil operation
• Integrity of control circuit wiring
• DC supply voltage
• And many more potential defects

profile p3 also offers new features based on customer's requirements including:

• Overlay of Multiple Profiles on colour screen
• Streamlined Graphical User Interface (GUI)
• Automated capture of multiple breaker operations
• Upload previous records for comparison

This portable handheld device will be an invaluable addition to the maintenance technician's toolkit that can be used at any circuit breaker location.

Key Features of PROFILE P3

A summary of the key features which make the profile p3 an easy to use handheld device:

• Enables onsite analysis of key circuit breaker parameters
• High resolution colour screen - enables four trip coil profiles to be simultaneously displayed for immediate onsite analysis
• Intelligent power management system
• A self re-arming facility which enables capture of traces on a circuit breaker with multiple fault operations
• Integration of the 3 phase online measurement into the handset which eliminates the need for a separate interface unit
• The facility to upload records for comparison of previous shots
• Expanded memory to hold at least 1000 company circuit breaker records on handheld
• Provision to upgrade software with new features from a USB stick

Replay Pro

Test records can also be downloaded for storage and a more in depth analysis using the proprietary Replay Pro software (Figure 4). This includes new features.

• Improved search options
• Advanced editing options
• Enhanced graphics
• Uses SQL database

PROFILE ANALYSIS

The current 'profile' allows diagnosis of potential defects in the trip coil mechanism and also highlights problems within the main circuit breaker contacts. Each Circuit Breaker type has a characteristic profile similar to that shown in figure 2. Deviations from this profile can be easily detected by comparing profiles from first trip operations with subsequent or previous trip coil profiles. The same methodology can be applied to the close coil operation.