Solid-State Circuit Breaker Panel for Safer Power Distribution
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Summary
Problems
Conventional circuit breakers are slow to respond to faults, increasing the risk of fire and damage to electrical equipment, and are not easily controlled remotely, limiting their suitability for smart power distribution.
Innovation solutions
The development of an electrical distribution panel using solid-state circuit breakers with a closeable air gap and a communications and control bus, allowing for fast fault detection and isolation, and remote control through a head-end interface and gateway, enabling quick installation and real-time monitoring.
TRIZ Analysis
Specific contradictions:
General conflict description:
Principle concept:
If conventional electromechanical circuit breakers are used, then the device complexity is low and ease of manufacture is high, but the response speed is slow (several milliseconds) and remote control capability is lacking
Why choose this principle:
The patent replaces conventional electromechanical circuit breakers with solid-state circuit breakers that use semiconductor devices (such as IGBTs or MOSFETs) to interrupt current flow. This substitution eliminates moving parts and mechanical trip mechanisms, enabling response times in the microsecond range compared to millisecond-scale mechanical breakers, while integrating digital control and communication capabilities for remote operation.
Principle concept:
If conventional electromechanical circuit breakers are used, then the device complexity is low and ease of manufacture is high, but the response speed is slow (several milliseconds) and remote control capability is lacking
Why choose this principle:
The invention changes the operational parameters of the circuit breaker by transitioning from mechanical switching to solid-state electronic switching. This involves changing the response time parameter from several milliseconds to microseconds, and enabling new parameters such as remote control capability, real-time monitoring, and programmable trip settings through integrated microcontrollers and communication interfaces.
Application Domain
Data Source
AI summary:
The development of an electrical distribution panel using solid-state circuit breakers with a closeable air gap and a communications and control bus, allowing for fast fault detection and isolation, and remote control through a head-end interface and gateway, enabling quick installation and real-time monitoring.
Abstract
An electrical distribution panel for controlling the distribution of electrical power to a plurality of loads includes a plurality of solid-state circuit breakers (SSCBs), each including a thermally conductive heatspreader and one or more power semiconductor devices that control whether electrical current is able to flow to an attached load; a distribution panel heatsink configured in thermal contact with the SSCB heatspreaders; one or more cooling fans that blow air onto the distribution panel heatsink; a stacked bus bar with quick-fit pin-mount receptacles for receiving mating/matching press-fit connection pins located on line-side terminals of the SSCBs; a communications and control (comm/control) bus communicatively coupled to the plurality of SSCBs; and a head-end interface and gateway to which an external computer can connect, to, among other things, set and alter trip settings of the plurality of SSCBs via the comm/control bus.