Written by Mark Lloyd, Senior Product Manager- Power Supplies & Surge Protection

A major industry trend I have seen over recent years is the increasing use of dedicated circuit breakers for device protection, as opposed to the long-established circuit breakers such as MCB and MCCBs used to protect complete installations. Within the device circuit breaker offering the electronic circuit breaker is emerging as the dominant. In my time with Phoenix Contact we have released a number of new electronic circuit breakers including fixed or configurable single and multi-channel devices with a host of different features to suit whatever applications are thrown at us.  

Spoiler alert: this spring sees the release of a brand new range we are calling CAPAROC.  

What is CAPAROC?  

In a few words, it is a fully customisable system for electronic overcurrent protection. Drawing from all the tried and tested features of our existing electronic circuit breaker families (CBM, CBMC, PTCB) such as easy intuitive operation, but packaged as part of a modular and completely flexible system.  

The system consists of:  

• Feed in modules 
• Circuit Breaker modules 
• Potential Distribution (0V) modules 
• Current Rail 

The Feed In modules are the connection point for the input power supply. These feed power to all connected circuit breakers via the current rail. The Feed in modules also provide an interface to higher level controllers. Initially there will be a Profinet enable feed in module as well as one with simple status/reset control, but more protocols will follow including I/O link.  

The circuit breaker modules themselves connect onto the power rail to the right of the feed in modules and will be available as 1, 2 or 4 channels and with a range of fixed and configurable ratings.  

The design of the current rail allows any circuit breaker to be removed and replaced without disrupting any of the other connected circuits, so it is truly hot-swappable. The current rail is available in 4, 8 and 20 slots with additional extension modules that simply click to the existing rail if more modules need to be added.   

For more information, contact Mark on 07717 335477 or email mlloyd@phoenixcontact.com