IOT Based Circuit Breaker

This paper presents Internet of Thing (I.O.T) based monitoring & control of circuit breaker. Circuit breaker is an important component of Industrial Electrical System. It is used for protection & switching. Hence, reliable operation of circuit breaker is essential. Circuit breaker ages over time & number of operations. This raises a concern regardingreliability of circuit breaker operation. In order to ascertain reliability of circuit breaker, it is general practice to carry out preventive maintenance at fixed time intervals. The main disadvantage of this maintenance approach is unnecessary downtime & offline usage of separate diagnostics equipment although the circuit breaker is healthy. This increases the maintenance cost of circuit breakers. Moreover, in presentpractice, the control of circuit breaker is realized through hardwired control logic which increases the size of control & metering cabinet of the circuit breaker & prevents integration of Internet of Things. This put a limitation on decision makingprocess as circuit breakers data are not accessible on the fly. Presently monitoring of circuit breaker is being carried out through proprietary solutions like Remote Terminal Units & SCADA. Proprietary solution raises a concern regarding reliability & security of the safety/safety related/strategic application as the backend implementation of proprietary solution is not accessible by the user. In this paper, an attempt was made to develop monitoring & control scheme of a typical circuit breaker using Arduino Mega 2560 embedded microcontroller along with Ethernet Shield for integration of Internet of Things. Circuit breaker parameters like load current, trip coil current, close coil current, spring charging motor current, number of closing operations, number of tripping operations etc. are monitored. The monitored data are uploaded to Internet of Things platform “ThingSpeaks” in order to make circuit breaker data available on the fly for effective decision making. Monitored circuit breaker parameters are used to determine health of the circuit breaker in order to ascertain its reliable operation & to determine its maintenance/replacement needs. This paper is an effort to develop automated circuit breaker monitoring & control systems that diagnose the electrical and mechanical health of circuit breaker in real time. This is a shift in the maintenance paradigm from time-based maintenance to as- needed maintenance. This shift comes with the benefit of maintaining adequate circuit breaker performance while reducing overall maintenance costs & unnecessary downtime. Moreover, open source platform is used which eliminates the concern regarding reliability & security of the safety/safety related/strategic application as complete source code implementation is open & fully accessible by the user.