{"id":263,"date":"2017-07-18T15:49:02","date_gmt":"2017-07-18T15:49:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jpelectricalcompany.com\/blog\/?p=263"},"modified":"2017-07-18T15:49:02","modified_gmt":"2017-07-18T15:49:02","slug":"smart-circuit-breakers-the-next-frontier-of-the-grid-edge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jpelectricalcompany.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/smart-circuit-breakers-the-next-frontier-of-the-grid-edge\/","title":{"rendered":"Smart Circuit Breakers: The Next Frontier of the Grid Edge?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Go down to the basement of your office building or apartment complex, or the garage of your home, and you\u2019ll find a ubiquitous piece of electrical equipment that could be the next frontier for smart, connected energy management — the circuit breaker.<\/p>\n

Circuit breakers are a multibillion-dollar market. Projections show a global market of between $13 billion and $19 billion\u00a0by decade’s end, dominated by giants such as Siemens, ABB, Schneider Electric, Eaton, Toshiba, Mitsubishi, and GE\u2019s Alstom.<\/p>\n

Most of the circuit breakers out there are fairly simple, electromechanical devices that sit idle the vast majority of the time. But the latest versions are coming with features like wireless connectivity and computing power that are meant to turn them into something more like a smart meter or a smartphone.<\/p>\n

That, in turn, could allow utilities and building owners to start tracking the interplay of grid-supplied power and on-site distributed energy resources (DERs) like solar, batteries and plug-in electric vehicles, or demand response. As more and more buildings start to get these smart, networked circuit breakers, they could augment — or even replace — a lot of other equipment used for this purpose today.<\/p>\n

Eaton and EPRI test smart circuit breakers as virtual meters, load controllers<\/h3>\n

That\u2019s the idea behind the field trial of Eaton\u2019s energy management circuit breaker (EMCB). Last year, the electrical equipment giant started deploying its smart circuit breakers at about 500 homes with 12 U.S. utilities, including Duke Energy, Southern Company, CenterPoint, ComEd and Pepco. Over the next year, it will be working with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) to see if they\u2019re capable of collecting and sharing data accurately, receiving and sending controls to other smart equipment like thermostats or water heaters, and even shifting homes on and off of grid power during emergencies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to understand the functionality and potential value propositions for each device, working on utility-owned use cases,\u201d Tom Reddoch, the EPRI senior technical executive in charge of the project, said in a recent interview. \u201cThis is a powerful device to control solar; it\u2019s powerful to control storage; it\u2019s powerful as a [measurement and verification] device.\u201d They\u2019re also particularly useful for electric vehicle applications, because they\u2019re able to serve all the requirements of 240-volt EV charging equipment. “The charging infrastructure is being integrated into the breakers,\u201d Reddoch said.<\/p>\n

Eaton and EPRI will have devices in the field through 2017, and by next year, they “should have sufficient field data to answer questions about the functional features,\u201d he added. That will also provide feedback about potential modifications that Eaton may want to include in each device, he said.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s valuable insight for Eaton, which is looking at ways to embed the technology across its product lines. “We\u2019ve been in the circuit protection device business for years; it’s in a nice place in the distribution ecosystem,” Ron Thompson, Eaton’s director of business development for emerging markets and new technologies, said in a recent interview.<\/p>\n

Each year, Eaton manufactures about 50 million poles — individual 1-inch breakers — for the circuit breakers it embeds in power distribution equipment like switchboards and panel boards, and “a percentage of those could eventually become smart breakers. Any time a building is built or retrofitted, that becomes part of the real estate of our products — and if the breakers are intelligent, I don\u2019t have to put a meter in or a relay for the circuit — I don\u2019t have to do a lot of things.”<\/p>\n

As EMCBs become standard equipment, they could start to serve as energy billing settlement and load control devices, similar to how smart meters function today, but down to individual circuits in homes and buildings, Thompson said. \u201cThe breaker has Wi-Fi communication built in, to connect to the Wi-Fi in the home,\u201d he said. \u201cIn real time, if a utility is experiencing an under-voltage or under-frequency condition, we can measure it and respond,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Solid state technology — the next step in smart circuit breakers?\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

There are challenges in bringing new technologies to such an entrenched market, however. \u201cThe circuit breaker world has been one of the trickiest in terms of customer acceptance,\u201d said John DeBoer, new product introduction manager for Siemens, in an interview last month. \u201cIt\u2019s a classic industry that\u2019s been really grounded in safety and reliable distribution of power. Their job is to sit there for a long time, and wait for that one moment when something unsafe happens in the electrical system. They\u2019re trying to protect that wire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even so, Siemens is looking far ahead for the next generation of smart circuit breakers, including the latest in solid-state power electronics. In February, the German industrial giant invested in Charlotte, N.C.-based startup Atom Power, which has designed a solid-state circuit breaker that replaces the electromechanical features of a traditional device with digital power control.<\/p>\n

Solid-state circuit breakers have actually been around since the 1970s. “But the technology wasn\u2019t ready, and the customers definitely weren’t going to pay for them,” DeBoer said.<\/p>\n

But advances in solid-state power electronics have increased the capability and lowered the price of devices like these, he said. In terms of design, \u201cthe biggest thing that Atom Power has done well is they\u2019ve gotten the solid-state device fully in series. It is sitting entirely within the conduction path,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

That makes Atom Power\u2019s devices faster, and thus safer, than classic electromechanical systems, which take a few milliseconds to move, he said. \u201cA solid-state device can move at the speed of a computer,\u201d improving the device\u2019s kilo-amperes interrupting capacity, or KAIC, a key measure of a circuit breaker\u2019s ability to perform its core function of keeping electrical equipment safe from surges, arcs and other hazards.<\/p>\n

Beyond that, Atom Power\u2019s integrated switches and panels can serve all the smart functions of an inverter or smart meter, he said. \u201cThe market for the metering of energy is absolutely exploding right now — and it\u2019s metering at all levels. I would say it has more than doubled in the past year or year and a half. The big trend is metering in buildings for multiple purposes at the same time. With the complexity of energy these days, and the growth in smart meters, it\u2019s made energy more complicated and more confusing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The drawback is that solid-state power electronics are still expensive. \u201cThese things are still five to 10 times more expensive than a traditional circuit breaker,\u201d DeBoer said. \u201cThe incremental value, though, is that we\u2019re seeing healthy year-over-year cost reductions, like you\u2019re seeing in the semiconductor world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Original Source: https:\/\/www.greentechmedia.com\/articles\/read\/smart-circuit-breakers-the-next-frontier-of-the-grid-edge<\/p>\n

Original Author: Jeff St. John<\/p>\n

Original Date: April 19 2017<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Go down to the basement of your office building or apartment complex, or the garage of your home, and you\u2019ll find a ubiquitous piece of electrical equipment that could be the next frontier for smart, connected energy management — the circuit breaker. Circuit breakers are a multibillion-dollar market. 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