What are protective devices and types of protective devices explained in advance?

 What are protective devices and types of protective devices explained in advance?

Some of the essential parts of every electrical circuit or any field of electricity are what we call safety or protective devices. To jump into the main topic of the day let's take a look at what a protective device is.

 What are protective devices?

Protective devices or safety devices are special electrical or electronic devices that are purposely designed for the protection or safety of an electrical or electronic circuit and are used in electrical circuits to protect against an overcurrent flow, overheat, leakages, and many more. 

When protective devices are used in an electrical or electronic circuit, it helps avoid fire outbreaks, damages to circuits or appliances. 

Note that some of these protective devices react or operates automatically (trips or cuts off) and would require a well-qualified electrician or an electrical engineer to either repair, trip it back (ON) again to make the circuit complete circuit for normal operation or replace it with a new one to make a closed or complete circuit for normal operation.

 

There are so many types of protective devices available in the market nowadays but today in this article, we are going to be learning about the top 6 types of protective devices or electrical safety devices that are mostly used.  

And these top 6 types of protective devices are namely; the

1. Electrical fuses
2. Breakers or circuit breakers
3. The poly switch
4. RCCB
5. MCB
6. Lighting arrestor

Electrical  fuses 

Electrical or electronic fuses are the most commonly used protective devices that are made of a thin wire that is inserted or placed within either a small tube with two contact points or in a fuse carrier with two contact points. 

Fuses are made to cut off to make a circuit an open circuit in the cases where a faulty current is flowing or passing through an electrical circuit and will require to qualify electrical engineer to either replace it with a new one or repair it.

 Fuses normally cut off whenever the current passing through a circuit exceeded its normal limits. There are so many types of fuses that are available in the market nowadays and are used in different areas of work.

In this new world in which we are now, fuses are in a way designed to partake or perform different applications which include a specific voltage, time responses, current ratings, and a breaking capacity.

Breakers or circuit breakers

Nowadays, circuit breakers are the most recommended protective devices to be used in electrical wiring or domestic wiring as they are specially designed to perform a specific task such as protecting an electrical circuit against an overcurrent flow, leakages, or earth leakages, overloads, and many more in advanced. 

Circuit breakers are the types of protective devices or safety electrical devices that are specially designed to trip off automatically whenever an overcurrent is passing through a circuit or leakage occurred in an electrical circuit.

There are mainly 3 categories or types of circuit breakers available in the market and are used in the field of electricity with their various task and working principles and operations that you must know.

Note that circuit breakers are mainly designed to operate or trip off automatically and would require you to manually turn it on again to make the circuit complete but can only remain stable at its ON position when that fault is been solved but without the fault been solve out, it would still trip OFF to keep that particular circuit safe.

The poly switch

 Polyswitch is normally the type of safety or protective device that is designed for the protection of an electronic circuit against the abnormal electric current flow in that electronic circuit. These types of fuses are sometimes called multi fuse. 

They are used in special applications which involve computers and many other electronic devices. Note that there are so many of these types of poly switches available in the market with their various function.

  RCCB

One of the commonly used protective devices for checking leakages in domestic wiring systems is the RCCB protective device. RCCB simply means a Residual Current Circuit Breaker.

RCCB is a type of protective electrical device that is specially made or designed to protect an electrical circuit against earth leakages

.

 Whenever the neutral wire or the live or hot wire has contacted or interfered with the ground or earth wire, the RCCB automatically trips off to keep the house or the circuit from danger.

These types of protective or safe electrical devices are specially made to be rest and also designed to be used as a testing device or apparatus in an electrical circuit.

MCB

MCB is one of the most commonly used overload current circuit breakers in domestic wiring. These are the types of protective devices that are specially designed to protect an electrical wiring system against an overload current flow to prevent fire outbreaks and damages.

Let's say that an electrical circuit can only carry a current up to 100 Amperes and the current exceeded its limit then the MCB would automatically trip of in other to protect the circuit by turning the circuit to an open circuit

.

 These types of protective devices are also made to trip off automatically when an overload current occurred in an electrical circuit but must be turned on manually for normal operation. 

There are so many types of MCB that are available in the market with their various working principles. 

Lighting arrestor

Lighting arrestors are the most commonly used safety device in the field of electricity to make a current flow normally in an electrical circuit and are also capable of arresting unwanted current flow in an electrical circuit. 

There are many types of lighting arrestors in the marketplace nowadays with their various working principles.