Maximal protection: Lowering incident energy and arc blast elements by minimizing arcing time

Arcing faults are rare events, but they often lead to severe injuries. From the economic point of view, the consequences due to direct and indirect costs can be extremely high. There are various options to prevent arcing faults, but faults cannot be totally eliminated. This is why several approaches to mitigate the consequences of arcing faults have been introduced. Several manufacturers have started to produce arc flash protection relays based on optical detection of light energy from an arc. In most applications, the light information is confirmed by overcurrent information before a trip command is initiated to an upstream current breaking device. The tripping of a circuit breaker, for instance, occurs in only a few milliseconds. This seems to be the state-of-the-art technology, leading in most cases to very reasonable incident energy levels. However, it is essential to be able to minimize not only the thermal impact but the pressure wave as well. This paper investigates technology aimed at maximal protection.