Low Voltage Circuit Breakers
Low Voltage Circuit Breakers
As you would expect, our services for low voltage circuit breakers extend beyond our capabilities in your facility. Field capabilities are discussed in more detail under the substation and switchgear page. At each of our 5 fully equipped facilities, we offer circuit breaker reconditioning and retrofits. These services offer you a means to maintain the critical functions of your switchgear lineup, without the massive investment in purchasing and installing a new line-up. The mechanical and electrical integrity of your circuit breakers can be completely restored through our reconditioning service. Our retrofit offering replaces the existing trip unit with state-of-the-art solid-state devices, which, along with improving the reliability of your circuit breakers, can add functionality that simplifies the implementation of your arc flash compliance plans.
Solid-State Retrofit
The advent of modern solid-state trip units has greatly improved the reliability over dashpot, electro-mechanical or early solid-state trip devices. Our retrofit offering includes the installation, configuration and testing that is required to provide you with a circuit breaker with all the monitoring and tripping capabilities of a brand new unit, at a fraction of the cost. We can set up the trip unit to the original circuit breaker settings or your specific requirements (from your NFPA arc flash study). In both cases, the progress is documented in a detailed report. The custom report will be delivered to you following the completion of your project. The report can include high-resolution photographs, root cause analysis, recommendations and test documentation.
Reconditioning
Our circuit breaker reconditioning service offering will return your circuit breaker to you in like new condition. Upon receipt of your breaker, we assign a unique job number, document incoming settings, and start a photographic log to detail the reconditioning process. Our switchgear repair area is staffed with expert technicians who will facilitate the entire repair. When working on your circuit breaker, we tear it down completely to the frame and inspect every aspect; each component is evaluated and considered for replacement. The framework will be sandblasted and painted with the manufacturer’s original color in our paint booth. The contacts will be evaluated and if replacement isn’t necessary, we will restore them to a like new status in our vibratory polishing process. The plating on your finger clusters, moving contacts and stationary contacts are inspected and replated as necessary. Our in-house silver-plating system means your project will not be delayed. The entire mechanism (whenever possible) is completely disassembled, inspected, reconditioned, and then reassembled. The contact blocks, auxiliary devices, and control wiring are reinstalled and the correct operation is verified. Finally, the trip unit is installed on the completed circuit breaker, and electrical testing is conducted with our calibrated test equipment. The electrical tests on the circuit breaker include primary injection testing (up to 60,000 ampere), insulation resistance checks (megger), and contact resistance checks with a digital low-resistance ohmmeter. The entire reconditioning and retrofit of your existing breakers can be done at half the cost of new and can be done one at a time or all together.
Solutions
Our expertise covers the full range of low voltage breakers including air frame, vacuum, bolted, draw out, electrically operated, mechanically operated, DC breakers, and molded case breakers. While our service offerings are tailored to meet the specific requirements for each of these breaker types, there are numerous other types and styles that we are able to apply our extensive expertise to; if the above information does not cover your specific need or problem, please contact us for more details. We are experts at finding solutions to your maintenance problems. When you need to maintain breakers but can't find the time for a lengthy production outage, we can supply spare breakers from our inventory or procure spare breakers, recondition them, and orchestrate the swapping of individual circuit breakers to limit the impact to your power outage schedule while helping you accomplish the maintenance you require.