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Earth leakage circuit breaker

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An Earth-leakage circuit breaker (ELCB) is a safety device used in electrical installations

with high Earth impedance to prevent shock. It detects small stray voltages on the metal
enclosures of electrical equipment, and interrupts the circuit if a dangerous voltage is
detected. Once widely used, more recent installations instead use residual current circuit
breakers which instead detect leakage current directly.

Contents
 1 Purpose
  2 History
 3 Operation
 4 Types
o 4.1 Voltage-operated (ELCB)
 4.1.1 Disadvantages
o 4.2 Current sensing devices (RCD/RCCB)
 4.2.1 Voltage Sensing Advantages
 4.2.2 Voltage Sensing Disadvantages
o 4.3 Earth bypassing
o 4.4 Nuisance trips
o 4.5 Failure to respond
 5 See also
 6 References

Purpose
The main purpose of Earth leakage protectors is to prevent injury to humans and animals due
to electric shock.

History
This is a category of devices, which are used to protect instruments, circuits and operators,
while Earth leakage. Early ELCBs are voltage sensing devices, which are now replaced by
current sensing devices (RCD/RCCB). Usually voltage sensing devices are called ELCB and
current sensing devices are called RCCB.

Voltage sensing ELCBs were first introduced about sixty years ago. Current sensing ELCBs
were first introduced about forty years ago. For many years, the voltage operated ELCB and
the differential current operated ELCB were both referred to as ELCBs because it was a
simpler name to remember. But the use of a common name for two different devices gave
rise to considerable confusion in the electrical industry.

If the wrong type was used on an installation, the level of protection given could be
substantially less than that intended.

To eliminate this confusion, IEC decided to apply the term residual current device (RCD) to
differential-current-operated ELCBs. Residual current refers to any current over and above
the load current...

Operation
An ELCB is a specialised type of latching relay that has a building's incoming mains power
connected through its switching contacts so that the ELCB disconnects the power when earth
leakage is detected.

The ELCB detects fault currents from live to the Earth (ground) wire within the installation it
protects. If sufficient voltage appears across the ELCB's sense coil, it will switch off the
power, and remain off until manually reset. A voltage-sensing ELCB does not sense fault
currents from live to any other Earthed body.

Types
There are two types of Earth-leakage circuit breaker:

 voltage operated (referred as ELCB in this article) and,

 current operated (referred to as RCCB in this article).

Voltage-operated (ELCB)

Voltage ELCBs have been in widespread use since then, and many are still in operation but
are no longer installed in new construction. A voltage-operated ELCB detects a rise in
potential between the protected interconnected metalwork (equipment frames, conduits,
enclosures) and a distant isolated Earth reference electrode. They operate at a detected
potential of around 50 volts to open a main breaker and isolate the supply from the protected
premises.[1]

A voltage-operated ELCB has a second terminal for connecting to the remote reference Earth
connection.

The Earth circuit is modified when an ELCB is used; the connection to the Earth rod is
passed through the ELCB by connecting to its two Earth terminals. One terminal goes to the
installation Earth CPC (circuit protective conductor, aka Earth wire), and the other to the
Earth rod (or sometimes other type of Earth connection).

Disadvantages

Compared with a current-sensing system, voltage sensing systems have several disadvantages
which include:

 A wire break in the fault to load section, or in the earth to ground section, will disable
operation of the ELCB.
 Requirement of an additional third wire from the load to the ELCB.
 Separate devices cannot be grounded individually.
 Any additional connection to Earth on the protected system can disable the detector.

Current sensing devices (RCD/RCCB)

RCD/RCCB is the commonly used ELCB type. An RCCB typically consists of a current
transformer, which has multiple primary windings and one secondary winding. Neutral and
line (or lines in multiple phase systems) wires act as the primary windings. A wire wound
coil is the secondary winding. The current through the secondary winding is zero at the
balanced condition. In balance condition, the flux due to the current through the phase wire
will be neutralized by the current through the neutral wire, since the current, which flows
from the phase will be returned to the neutral. When a fault occurs, a small current will flow
to the ground also. This makes an unbalance between line and neutral current and that creates
an unbalanced magnetic field. This induces a current through the secondary winding, which
is connected to the sensing circuit. This will sense the leakage and send signal to tripping
system.

Voltage Sensing Advantages

Voltage sensing ELCBs have a few advantages over current sensing RCDs: 1) They are less
sensitive to fault conditions, and therefore have fewer nuisance trips. (This does not mean
they always do, as practical performance depends on installation details and the
discrimination enhancing filtering in the ELCB.) Therefore, by electrically separating cable
armour from the cable circuit protective conductor, an ELCB can be arranged to protect
against cable damage only, and not trip on faults in downline installations. 2) Voltage sensing
ELCB's will also trip on DC current faults to ground which a transformer interfaced
RCD/RCCB is unable to sense, with similar issues with frequencies significantly above
mains frequency. This may lead to ground faults on variable speed drives between the drive
electronics and motor not being detected for example.

Voltage Sensing Disadvantages

Voltage sensing ELCBs have some disadvantages:

 They do not detect faults that don't pass current through the CPC to the Earth rod.
 They do not allow a single building system to be easily split into multiple sections
with independent fault protection, because Earthing systems are usually bonded to
pipework.
 They may be tripped by external voltages from something connected to the Earthing
system such as metal pipes, a TN-S Earth or a TN-C-S combined neutral and Earth.
 As with RCDs, electrically leaky appliances such as some water heaters, washing
machines and cookers may cause the ELCB to trip.
 ELCB introduce additional resistance and an additional point of failure into the
Earthing system.

Earth bypassing

It is not unusual for ELCB protected installation to have a second unintentional connection to
Earth somewhere, one that does not pass through the ELCB sense coil. This can occur via
metal pipework in contact with the ground, metal structural framework, outdoor home
appliances in contact with soil, and so on.

When this occurs, fault current may pass to Earth without being sensed by the ELCB. Despite
this, perhaps counterintuitively, the operation of the ELCB is not compromised. The purpose
of the ELCB is to prevent Earthed metalwork rising to a dangerous voltage during fault
conditions, and the ELCB continues to do this just the same, the ELCB will still cut the
power at the same CPC voltage level. (The difference is that higher fault current is then
needed to reach this voltage.)

Nuisance trips

While voltage and current on the earth line is usually fault current from a live wire, this is not
always the case, thus there are situations in which an ELCB can nuisance trip.
When an installation has two connections to Earth, a nearby high current lightning strike will
cause a voltage gradient in the soil, presenting the ELCB sense coil with enough voltage to
cause it to trip.

If the installation's Earth rod is placed close to the Earth rod of a neighbouring building, a
high Earth leakage current in the other building can raise the local ground potential and cause
a voltage difference across the two Earths, again tripping the ELCB. Close Earth rods are
unsuitable for ELCB use for this reason, but in real life such installations are sometimes
encountered.

Both RCDs and ELCBs are prone to nuisance trips from normal harmless Earth leakage to
some degree. On one hand ELCBs are on average older, and hence tend to have less well
developed filtering against nuisance trips, and on the other hand ELCBs are inherently
immune to some of the causes of false trips RCDs suffer, and are generally less sensitive than
RCDs. In practice RCD nuisance trips are much more common.

Another cause of nuisance tripping is due to accumulated or burden currents caused by items
with lowered insulation resistance. This may occur due to older equipment, or equipment
with heating elements, or even wiring in buildings in the tropics where prolonged damp and
rain conditions can cause the insulation resistance to lower due to moisture tracking. If there
is a 30 mA protective device in use and there is a 10 mA burden from various sources then
the unit will trip at 20 mA. The individual items may each be electrically safe but a large
number of small burden currents accumulates and reduces the tripping level. This was more a
problem in past installations where multiple circuits were protected by a single ELCB.

Heating elements of the tubular form are filled with a very fine powder that can absorb
moisture if the element has not be used for some time. In the tropics, this may occur, for
example if a clothes drier has not been used for a year or a large water boiler used for coffee,
etc. has been in storage. In such cases, if the unit is allowed to power up without RCD
protection then it will normally dry out and successfully pass inspection. This type of
problem can be seen even with brand new equipment.

Failure to respond

Some ELCBs do not respond to rectified fault current. This issue is the same in principle with
ELCBs and RCDs, but ELCBs are on average much older and specifications have improved
considerably over the years, so an old ELCB is more likely to have some fault current
waveform that it will not respond to.

With any mechanical device, failures occur, and ELCBs should ideally be tested periodically
to ensure they still work.

If either of the Earth wires become disconnected from the ELCB, it will no longer trip and the
installation will often no longer be properly Earthed.

See also
 Residual-current device
 Earthing system
References
1.

1. Christopher Shelton, Electrical installations third edition, Nelson Thornes, 2004

ISBN 0-7487-7979-5 page 233

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