Switch to safety now with electrical switchgear

Imagine having all the appliances you need but not having the switches to plug them in! Switches and switchgear are an integral part of our homes not because of their function but their convenience. And with great power comes great responsibility. Needless to say, switchgear should be extremely safe to use because this type of equipment is directly linked to the reliability of the electricity supply. Switchgear and protection go hand in hand.

The earliest known power stations used simple switches, mounted on insulating panels of marble or asbestos. When power levels and voltages rapidly escalated, making opening manually operated switches were too dangerous for anything other than isolation of a de-energized circuit.

Today, those days are long gone. We now see switchgear that not only protects but complements the place you live in. These are the days of aesthetically designed switchgear that raises your room’s style quotient as well.

In technical terms, these days we see everyone use high voltage switchgear mainly air-blast, vacuum, or SF6 equipment, allowing large currents and power levels to be safely controlled by automatic equipment.

Electrical switchgear has 2 types of components, a power conducting component, such as switches, circuit breakers, fuses, and lightning arrestors, that conduct or interrupt the flow of electrical power.

The other component is the control system such as control panels, that monitor, control, and protect the power conducting components.

All kinds of switchgear have two primary functions. First and foremost is protection, which is the interruption of short-circuiting and overload fault currents while maintaining service to unaffected circuits. Switchgear also provides isolation of circuits from power supplies.

For our homes, switchgear can either be entirely enclosed within a building or can be mounted outdoors and insulated by air depending on the voltage.

Switches may be manually operated or have motor drives to allow for remote control. There also exists hybrid switchgear, which combines AIS and GIS technologies. It is characterized by a compact and modular design, which encompasses several different functions in one module.

The times they are a-changing. How we wish we want technology that doesn’t require a switch but operates with just a clap as we see in fantasy movies. Hopefully soon enough!