Question: There was a house fire on our street last week. Investigators traced the cause to a short circuit in an electrical wire. Now I'm terrified that a fire can start in my home without warning.

Residential electrical branch circuit breakers incorporate electronic and electrical technology in Arc Fault Circuit Interrupters that can turn off power to prevent fires if arcing occurs. This ...

The 2002 NEC implemented new requirements to help reduce the number of electrical fires caused by parallel arc faults in branch circuit wiring. All branch circuits supplying bedrooms in single-family ...

Solid-state power controllers (SSPCs) are designed to replace mechanical circuit breakers, which work by tripping when the temperature of their internal sensors reaches a predetermined level (Fig. 1).

A new home with traditional circuit breakers is just as susceptible to an electrical fire as one that is 100 years old. But luckily, there’s a new type of circuit breaker that can sense when a fire is ...

Those of us old enough to remember fuse boxes don't look back fondly on them. A light went out and you ran to the box, removed the burned-out fuse and replaced it with a new one from your ever-ready ...

Although flawed in its execution, the addition of AFCIs to the 2002 Code highlights the importance of arc-fault protection. Circuit breakers and fuses are effective in preventing fires caused by a ...

What is this new circuit breaker, the Arc Fault Circuit Interrupter (AFCI), and how is it better than the circuit breakers (CBs) we have? Let me tell you a little story. Recently, I was working in a ...

Eaton Aerospace is to shrink its arc-fault circuit interrupter (AFCI) for use in fighters and adapt the technology to DC and three-phase AC electrical systems. Single-phase AC arc-fault circuit ...