ABB novel MCB triumph century of electrical safety and sustainability

By OEM Update Editorial May 7, 2024 5:23 pm IST

ABB Miniature Circuit Breaker (MCB) celebrates its centenary of safeguarding electrical circuits, reducing catastrophe risk, and ensuring safety in residential and commercial structures. Produced in India since 2001, MCBs detect defects and terminate circuits quickly.

As it advances to fulfil the demands of sustainability in the future, ABB’s revolutionary Miniature Circuit Breaker (MCB) marks its centenary of safeguarding electrical circuits. Because they reduce the chance of unanticipated catastrophes and ensure the safety of both residential and commercial structures, MCBs have completely changed the way we live our daily lives. Its application has not only revolutionised residential safety but also expanded electrical safety across society. ABB’s MCBs are used in a variety of industries to safeguard particularly vulnerable places from electrical hazards, including factories, data centres, homes, commercial spaces, transportation infrastructure, and more. The company has been producing these MCBs in India since 2001 at their Industry 4.0 Nelamangala facility.

When MCBs detect electrical defects like over-currents (short circuits and overloads), they terminate the circuit in 10 milliseconds, which is faster than the blink of an eye. The electrical system can then be swiftly and easily reset without the necessity of a replacement. As we transition towards a net-zero future, it is essential to increase electrification and integrate more diversified, renewable energy sources. This means protection devices such as ABB’s MCBs have larger electrical loads to manage along with variations in power supply and demand. ABB provides electrical safety to everything from solar panels and heat pumps to electric vehicles and brings additional protection against faults like residual currents, surges, earth fault currents, or arc faults.

“We at ABB India are proud to be part of this 100-year-old legacy of MCBs enhancing electrical safety in India and around the world. Our future-focused portfolio centres on achieving energy efficiency and transparent, sustainable practices. Our designs are compact, modular, and flexible, enabling buildings to be retrofitted and to integrate renewable energy sources quickly and safely. These products are ‘Made in India’ at our state-of-the-art manufacturing facility equipped with automation technology for the utmost precision and quality. These play a key role in ensuring the safe development of sustainable and modern communities, cities, and urban landscapes for our future.” Kiran Dutt, President Electrification, ABB India,.

The current protective devices make new and existing buildings around the world safer, smarter, and more environmentally friendly. Compact designs allow retrofitting even in historical structures with limited space. ABB has helped secure and upgrade electrical systems with their MCBs and ancillary products in a variety of critical infrastructure projects, monuments, commercial, and residential spaces, not just in India but throughout the world. ABB’s MCBs are versatile and adaptable, with several ranges available for various applications and additional functionality provided via auxiliary products. Nowadays, complete protection, which includes miniature circuit breakers (MCBs), residual-current devices (RCD), art fault detection devices (AFDD), and surge protection devices (SPD), provides increasingly higher performance, a lower carbon footprint, and greater connectivity to increase energy efficiency and decarbonisation.