Pros And Cons Of Earth Leakage Circuit Breakers

The Advantages of Earth Leakage Circuit Breakers:

·        There is one major advantage of the Earth Leakage Circuit Breakers over the RCDs. The ELCBs have not very sensitive towards the fault conditions and hence have less nuisance trips.

·        The ELCB can have a nuisance trip in situations where the voltage as well as the current in the earth line is a fault current which occurs from a live wire.

The Dis-Advantages of Earth Leakage Circuit Breakers:

·        The ELCBs do not indentify faults which do not pass current via the CPC into the earth rod.

·        A single building system cannot be split into multiple sections using the ELCBs the independent fault protection as most of the earthing systems are bonded towards a pipe work.

·        The Earth Leakage Circuit Breakers can be easily tripped by the external voltages from the things which are connected to the earthing system. For example, metal pipes, a TN-C-S combined neutral or earth.

·        The ELCBs are also much different from the RCDs as the ELCBs when connected to the leaky appliances like water heaters or washing machines or at times electric cookers can make them trip.

·        Most of the ELCBs also add some extra resistance which acts as an additional point of failure and thus affects the earthing system badly.

There are some of the Earth Leakage Circuit Breakers which do not respond towards a fault current which is rectified. There are also similar issues with the ELCBS as well as RCDs but ELCBs being much older and with some good improvements over the years, any old Earth Leakage Circuit Breaker can have little and uncommon fault current to which it might not respond to. As failures are much common with any electrical and mechanical device, the Earth Leakage Circuit Breakers which are used for them have to be properly and periodically tested to confirm that they still function properly. The Earth Leakage Circuit Breakers do not function properly if any of the earth wires get disconnected from them and they will no longer trip. Hence such installations do not function properly.