Preventing Electrical Hazards

Us­ing AF­D­D's To Pre­vent Elec­trical Fires

The elec­trical in­dustry is con­stantly in­nov­at­ing, de­vel­op­ing new ways to make in­stall­a­tion and op­er­a­tion safer. Elec­trical arcs re­main a sig­ni­fic­ant cause of fires across the world, which has led to the de­vel­op­ment of arc fault de­tec­tion devices (AFDD).

What is arc fault circuit protection?
More ad­vanced than a tra­di­tional cir­cuit breaker, AF­DDs are fit­ted with an in­tel­li­gent mi­cro­pro­cessor. This al­lows each AFDD unit to ana­lyse the wave­form of voltage and cur­rent to de­tect a pos­sible each arc in the con­nec­ted cir­cuit.

The AFDD can ac­cur­ately tell the dif­fer­ence between real arc faults and nor­mal, switch­ing events. When a dan­ger­ous arc flash is de­tec­ted, the AFFD breaks the cir­cuit and stops the flow of elec­tri­city ef­fect­ively ex­tin­guish­ing the dan­ger­ous arc. The abil­ity to tell the dif­fer­ence between nat­ur­ally oc­cur­ring arcs from switch­ing events for ex­ample and dan­ger­ous arcs pre­vents false trip­ping and in­creases the over­all safety of the in­stall­a­tion.

Where is arc fault protection required?
The in­clu­sion of Arc fault de­tec­tion devices is re­com­men­ded in the 18th edi­tion of BS 7671 as an ad­di­tional meas­ure for pre­vent­ing elec­trical fires. As a res­ult, AF­DDs are an es­sen­tial as­pect of any com­pli­ant build. 

AF­DDs can de­tect both series and par­al­lel arcs. Con­trary to pop­u­lar be­lief, AF­DDs do work on ring fi­nal cir­cuits however a series arc will not oc­cur on the ring cir­cuit cable it­self, a par­al­lel arc, however, is de­tec­ted and dis­con­nec­ted. Any cable com­ing off the ring cir­cuit however like a spur or flex­ible lead to an ap­pli­ance is af­forded both series and par­al­lel arc pro­tec­tion. Us­ing AFDD units from Hager, there­fore of­fers com­plete pro­tec­tion across res­id­en­tial prop­er­ties.

The AF­D­D’s on­board mi­cro­pro­cessor re­li­ably de­tects arcs caused by broken or dam­aged cables, in­cor­rect ter­min­a­tion, de­fect­ive plugs and flex­ible cables or other sim­ilar factors. The AFDD im­me­di­ately trips and there­fore cuts the power off when a po­ten­tially haz­ard­ous arc oc­curs, help­ing to pre­vent elec­trical fires or phys­ical in­jur­ies.

Flexible electric arcing prevention options
For one-off pro­jects, in­stalling Hager AF­DDs is as quick and easy as in­stalling tra­di­tional cir­cuit break­ers.

For lar­ger pro­jects it is worth con­sid­er­ing our tailored solutions. We can spe­cify and build pre-con­figured hy­brid AFDD con­sumer units ac­cord­ing to the spe­cific­a­tions of your pro­ject, ready for im­me­di­ate in­stall­a­tion.

Choos­ing tailored AFDD pro­tec­tion en­sures full com­pli­ance with the 18th edi­tion of BS7671 out of the box. It also dra­mat­ic­ally in­creases the speed at which your con­sumer units can be de­ployed.

Or­ange Elec­trical Con­tract­ors took this route, in­stalling 28 AFDD consumer units in a new 210-bed­room stu­dent ac­com­mod­a­tion block near War­wick Uni­versity. Tom Kennedy, the Dir­ec­tor was clear about the ad­vant­ages:

“By us­ing a tailored solu­tion from Hager, the Pre-con­figured Hy­brid AFDD con­sumer unit of­fers plenty of space and ac­cess­ib­il­ity so that our en­gin­eers can work com­fort­ably and at ease.  On a large-scale com­mer­cial pro­ject like this, in­stall­a­tion speed is also of the es­sence and can be the dif­fer­ence in en­abling us to stay on track with con­struc­tion dead­lines. The pre-as­sembled nature of the Hager hy­brid dis­tri­bu­tion board has made a real dif­fer­ence to us.”

Tailored solu­tions go bey­ond simply pre-pop­u­lat­ing boards. We provide cus­tom­ised as­sembly, steel­work and group­ing of products to build hy­brid units that in­crease elec­trical safety and which are prop­erly spe­ci­fied to the phys­ical in­stall­a­tion spe­cif­ics of the prop­erty.

Com­pli­ant, safe and aes­thet­ic­ally pleas­ing, there is al­ways an arc fault de­tec­tion device to meet the needs of your pro­ject. And if there is­n’t, we can design and build it for you.