Energy & Current Limiting Curves


Energy & Current Limiting Curves

Evaluate protection of electrical components

Overview

Visualize and evaluate energy and current-limiting capabilities of MCCB, fuse and power cables within a dynamic graphical environment. By providing a clear visual verification of let-through energy, ETAP Energy and Current Limiting Curves help engineers ensure that protective devices effectively mitigate fault energy before it exceeds the thermal withstand capability of the conductor.

  • Work efficiently using a modeless user interface, fully integrated within ETAP Power Simulator

  • Gain immediate insights with side-by-side graphical curves and tabular alerts

  • Present your evaluation with clarity using customization to spotlight key findings

 

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Star™ Energy and Current Limiting Characteristics View

The Characteristics View provides an advanced graphical environment for evaluating the protection of electrical components, specifically focusing on the interaction between cables and current-limiting devices like MCCBs and fuses. This functionality allows engineers to overlay device-specific energy-limiting and peak current-limiting curves against cable damage curves within the same view

Core Capabilities

  • Modeless user interface to keep the view open while working with other analysis tools in ETAP Power Simulator
  • Compare current-limiting capability curves in the same view (fuses and MCCBs, MCCBs and cable withstand energy)
  • Evaluate the protection of cables by MCCB for the current-limiting range
  • Visually verify cable size selection based on let-through energy protection
  • Select the displayed elements from either the one-line diagram or within the Characteristic View
  • Use the alert messages to identify issues with energy and current-limiting capabilities
  • Filter and sort elements with copy, screen capture, print preview options
  • Includes library content for thousands of MCCB and fuse models with energy and current limiting-curves

Display Functionality

  • Choose to display simultaneous or separate views for energy and current-limiting curves
  • Display the fault markers and comparisons with the current-limiting range
  • Choose to lock crosshair and labels in place within energy and current-limiting curves
  • Customize what to display (device ID, labels, settings, notes/comments, legend)
  • Customize individual views or create default plot options for new views

Star™ Auto-Evaluation of Cable Protection by Current Limiting Breakers

Auto-Evaluation further streamlines this process by automatically assessing cable protection, overload, and voltage drop requirements against the current-limiting characteristics of the breaker. By providing dynamic, rule-based validation, Auto-Evaluation simplifies the process of assessing the cable’s energy withstand capabilities and ensures that the breaker’s let-through energy is within safe limits. This solution eliminates the need to perform manual calculations. Complex studies can be easily managed thanks to comprehensive library support containing thousands of validated MCCB and fuse models. 

Key Features:

  • Plot the cable energy withstand capability curve
  • Plot the MCCB energy limiting capability curve
  • Evaluate cable protection by the current-limiting capability of MCCB
  • Evaluate cable overload and voltage drop
  • Includes fault markers, customizable crosshairs, and automated protection violation alert messages
  • Flexible display options include filtering, sorting, and high-quality report generation

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Automated Protection & Coordination

Reduce months of work to a few hours with Star™ Auto-Evaluation for automatic detection and evaluation of system protection and coordination.

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Testimonials

FAQs

Learn how to assess current-limiting LV breakers in protection and cable sizing using ETAP

Learn about the innovative new features and capabilities of ETAP specific to cable sizing and protection for low voltage networks. This presentation briefly covers the principles of current-limiting low voltage (LV) breakers and then demonstrates how ETAP can be used to assess the protection of cables and energy in LV networks. The new ETAP Energy and Current Characteristic View is presented, which is used for simplified analysis of cable protection against overcurrent conditions. Also, ETAP’s Star Auto-Evaluation power system monitoring is demonstrated. This module is used for assessing cable energy withstand capabilities to ensure that a breaker’s let-through energy is within safe limits. The presentation also demonstrates ETAP’s enhancements to cable sizing analysis that applies let-through energy as an additional constraint. By considering current-limiting breakers in the evaluation of an LV network model, engineers can make better informed decisions that ensure safety and improve reliability.

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