Day in and day out we hear the news about fires that take place in Kashmir due to a short circuits and damage properties, people get killed by electric shocks accidentally, electrical devices get damaged due to mains double phasing faults in colonies, poor electricity supply, etc. So what is this electric fault? In layman’s language, when something bad happens with the normal supply of mains electric power, its termed as a fault. What can a fault do? Well, it can burn the wiring, kill the electric devices, kill people, and burn down properties causing huge monetarily losses. How to prevent electric faults? Simply by using proper fault protection electric devices at the mains board of every household. What are those devices? Miniature Circuit Breaker (MCB), Residual Current Circuit Breaker (RCCB), Over voltage Under voltage Protection Breaker (OUVB), and a Surge Protection Device (SPD). A total of these 4 devices will protect your households from all the major electrical faults and prevent any mishap from happening and guarantee a lifelong working status of your electrical devices in your homes. So what do these devices do basically in simple terms?
MCB: It protects your house by turning off the electric supply automatically in less than few micro seconds when abnormal amount of current is taken by the load or maybe due to a short circuit thus preventing the wires and devices from melting, catching fire, or getting damaged.
RCCB: It prevents you from electric shocks even if you touch the live wire. Yes you heard me right. Install it and no more electric shocks. It will also trip the electric supply in less than few micro seconds when you touch the live wire.
OUVB: The most important protection device is this. It will turn off your mains electric supply if the voltage level exceeds the standard limit or goes below that limit thus preventing the damage to the electric devices. This is necessary because today most of the electric devices at households work in a specific voltage range i.e. 200-240 volts. This device measures this input voltage continuously and if the voltage range is exceeded or decreased in any way, it will turn off the electric power supply within few micro seconds.
SPD: Sometimes electric surges come on mains line due to lightening, etc. which causes a huge amount of voltage and current to rush to your house. This surge cannot be prevented by using a simple MCB. A SPD is a special devices which will protect your household electric devices from damage due to electric surges. Take an electric surge as a huge lump of inrush electric power to your house. This can cause the insulation burnout of your household transformers as well.
Well during my entire lifetime in Kashmir, I never saw anyone using these proper protective devices for electric faults. Reason is that people prefer unprofessional for the wiring jobs who have no concepts about these devices and the end result is fire due to short circuits, household devices burn during double phase faults, transformer burnouts due to high voltage surges, death due to electric shocks, mismatched voltages, voltage in neutral wire, unbalanced voltages, etc. At last I would ask every person who is reading this article to please install RCCB, SPD, OUVB along with the MCB’s (which normally everyone use) in your households and always use a rated MCB according to the load you use. Electricity is not dangerous until you make it.
(The author is M.tech in VLSI Design and Embedded Systems from Visveswaraya Technological University. Views are his own)
