Electric Breaker

Electric Breakers

When installing a solar panel system, you have to be familiar with the electric breakers and how it works with a solar PV system to avoid future electric problems. The electric breaker is one of the main components of a solar power system that provides safety mechanisms. If ever the electrical wiring of your system has too much current flowing through it, these breakers can easily cut the power until your solar installer can fix the system’s problem. 

For today’s article, we will discuss electric breakers and their function in solar photovoltaic systems.

What is an Electric Breaker?

An electric or circuit breaker is an electrical switch designed to protect electrical circuits from damage caused by overloading of current or a short circuit. The basic function of an electric breaker is to prevent the current flow once protective relays detect a fault in the system. 

Although it is frequently interchanged with a fuse, which is the simplest Over Current Protection device (OCPD) in electrical circuits, a circuit breaker, is a much-evolved type of device that interrupts the current flow. The main difference between the two is electric breaker is resettable and the fuse is not. The fuse sacrifices itself while protecting the system to overheat, while the circuit breaker can withstand hundreds and thousands of operations. Another difference is that electric breakers are used with relatively higher currents. 

Components of Circuit Breaker

A circuit breaker system is composed of three parts. These three components are the sensing system, relay, and the combination of contacts and the contact actuator. A sensing system is responsible for detecting an overload situation, while a relay is responsible for transferring the information to the switching arrangement, and the combination of contacts and the contact actuator. This electric arrangement is usually observed in power transmission and distribution networks dealing with very high currents, voltages, and powers. 

Circuit Breakers Calculation in Solar Panel Systems

When connecting circuit breakers to the PV system, you have to follow the recommended calculations to avoid future problems and damage to the entire system. The recommendations for using overcurrent protection devices including circuit breakers in solar modules against overloading conditions are given in IEC 60269-6 (volume 6 of IEC 60269-6) and also UL 248-19. 

For circuit breakers, IEC recommends a 20% and 25% margin in voltage and overload current. Most of the time, the ratings are specified by the solar manufacturers at given ambient conditions. If the temperatures exceed this given value, derating must be applied according to the manufacturer’s specifications. 

When it comes to breaker sizes for solar panels, NEC requires the breakers to be sized at 125% of the inverter’s rated output. So a 7680W inverter that outputs 240V, outputs 32A (7680W ÷ 240V = 32A). That requires a 40A breaker (32A x 125% = 40A).

Final Thoughts

If you owned a solar panel system at home,  you have to understand how circuit breakers work to prevent catching fires at home. These devices are one of the major components of the PV solar system as they protect the system wiring from getting too hot and accidentally catch fire if short circuits occurred. Thus, understanding the breaker itself and its proper calculations in the PV system should be done.

Manufacturers

In the simplest terms, manufacturing is the process of producing actual goods or items/products through the use of raw materials, human labour, use of machinery, tools and other processes such as chemical formulation. This process usually starts with product designing and raw material selection, turning them into an actual product output. 

Solar Products Manufacturers and Factories

In terms of solar, manufacturing encompasses the fabrication or production of materials across the solar market chain. The most common product being manufactured by solar companies are the solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, which are made with several subcomponents such as solar wafers, cells, glass, back sheets, and frames. Before a solar panel comes into life, it will undergo a lot of processes, from designing, modelling, choosing what raw materials to use and then assembling them all to make the final product.

More Than Just Solar Panels

Aside from the solar panels, solar companies have many other manufactured products that are required to make solar energy systems work smoothly, like solar inverters, batteries, combiner boxes, and racking and tracking structures.

Having a solar manufacturing sector makes a big difference in supplying affordable solar energy in different areas. Aside from maintaining the rising domestic and global demand for cleaner and renewable energy, they also help the economy grow, particularly the solar industry. If you are in search of a reliable solar manufacturing company, checking out our solar outsourcing company, SolarFeeds, would help you get easy access to reliable information, news, data and a list of solar manufacturers that can help you with solar products.

Slovakia

Solar Market Outlook in Slovakia

The Slovakian Energy Ministry is committed to pushing its renewable energy sector in order to achieve its target in the next 5 years or so. Majority of the solar energy sector is dependent on supply equipment from the US and other global developers of PV systems in order to meet its targets. 

The current electric generation in Slovakia is lower than most other European countries. The Ministry of Energy wants to change that by opening up tenders for renewable auctions, citing that solar projects will have the largest share. The new clean energy scheme in the country wants to promote higher efficiency energy sources and the planned auctions will help them achieve that through more solar power projects.

The solar PV installations in Slovakia are mostly attributed to the residential installations with 472 MW of installed solar PV capacity as of 2019. The government is seeing a huge potential for solar energy generation in the country and it is reflected in the growing demand in supply for solar panels for roof installations. The potential for solar energy is estimated at 5,200 GWh per year. 

Solar Energy Equipment Supply Capacity in Slovakia

Majority of the solar power equipment suppliers and distributors in Slovakia are from foreign investors such as those from the US, Germany, France, and Italy. 

Top 8 Major Seaports & Logistics in Slovakia

To facilitate the logistics and transport of solar power equipment in Slovakia, the country has two major ports in operation today:

• the Port of Bratislava 
• the Port of Komarno.