The occurrence of an arc fault is the most serious fault within a power system. The destructive impacts of an arc flash event can lead to severe injuries of the operating personnel, to costly equipment damages and long outages.
ABB offers active arc fault protection solutions for both arc fault detection and elimination which can reduce the above-named consequences. Combined they are designed to detect an internal arc in 1.5ms and after its detection eliminate it in less than 4 ms. Due to this the safety and the availability of the power system can be improved tremendously. Operating the network with a conventional solution with an operating time of 80 – 100 milliseconds results in cable fire and copper and steel melting.