More about arc-fault circuit interrupters

Since the arc-fault circuit interrupter (AFCI) was commercially introduced in 1998, questions have arisen about how it detect arcs, whether it detects series and parallel arcs, and what types of AFCIs are available. Types other than the original branch/feeder AFCI are emerging. This paper is intended to provide an update regarding answers to those questions, following an earlier paper that introduced the basic functioning of the AFCI (see G.D. Gregory et al., IEEE Trans. Ind. Apps., p. 928-33, 1998).