3 Reasons Circuit Breaker Maintenance Is Essential

A circuit breaker is a critical part of your electrical system. The job of a circuit breaker is to provide both overcurrent and short-circuit protection for electrical circuits. A variety of different issues – such as under or over-voltage, reverse power or under or over-frequency – can all cause a circuit breaker to kick into action.

A circuit breaker “breaks” the electrical circuit when it detects an issue. The circuit breaker cuts off power to prevent an overload or spike of energy from occurring. You must regularly schedule breaker maintenance to ensure that your breaker can continue to both support critical loads and operate safely.

These are three excellent reasons that breaker maintenance is essential:

• Breaker maintenance helps extend your circuit breaker’s operating life.
• It can help you catch potential issues before they cause a problem.
• Breaker maintenance can help confirm your breaker’s trip relay is functioning properly.

Breaker Maintenance Helps Extend the Operating Life of Your Circuit Breaker

Breaker maintenance is essential to extending the working life of your circuit breaker. As with anything else constantly in use – such as your car or your house – a circuit breaker will last longer and work better if it is appropriately maintained.

When you have breaker maintenance done, the technician will perform:

• Visual and mechanical inspections
• Electrical testing
• Lubrication and cleaning
• Resurfacing, plating or other restoration as necessary

When they are finished, the technician will provide you with a test report and certification. Breaker maintenance will help ensure that your circuit breaker is in good shape and help extend the life of your circuit breaker.

Breaker Maintenance Can Help You Catch Potential Issues Before They Cause a Problem

By keeping on top of breaker maintenance, you can catch potential issues before they start causing problems. Some of the issues that can occur with your circuit breaker are:

• Mis-wiring causing your circuit breaker to turn off when you don’t want it to.
• A loud humming noise is coming from your circuit breaker. This can be a sign that your circuit breaker is overloaded and isn’t tripping correctly.
• Sparking is a sign there may be connection issues with your circuit breaker.

You don’t want to be in the position of having a circuit breaker that is either malfunctioning or completely out of service at the wrong time. Keeping on top of breaker maintenance can help ensure that you aren’t suddenly confronted with a circuit breaker emergency.

Breaker Maintenance Can Help Confirm Your Breaker’s Trip Relay Works Properly

The most important task that a circuit breaker performs is that it “trips”. This means it shuts off power to the circuit where problems are happening. Two of the most common reasons a circuit breaker can trip are:

• Your circuits are overloaded. If a circuit tries to draw a greater electrical load than it’s meant to carry, it can get overloaded.
• You have an issue with a short circuit. A “dead short” is caused when a phase wire (hot wire) touches something else – such as another phase, neutral wire (white), a ground wire (green), or even the metal box case. A short circuit means that there is now a sudden, unimpeded flow of electricity due to lowered resistance.

If you have electrical issues and your circuit breaker doesn’t trip properly, you could be at serious risk of a fire or other electrical hazards. This is why it’s so important to ensure that you have breaker maintenance performed at appropriate intervals.

How can IPE Canada help me with breaker maintenance?

At IPE Canada, we pride ourselves on offering efficient and innovative electrical solutions. We have a highly qualified team of over fifteen electrical technicians who provide a variety of electrical maintenance and emergency services.

One of the maintenance services our team provides is circuit breaker maintenance. Breaker maintenance is vital to ensure that your breakers can operate safely and support critical loads.

If your circuit breaker isn’t working correctly, it may fail or trip at inappropriate times. This can lead to unwanted power outages or even hazards such as a fire. This is why regularly scheduled breaker maintenance, performed by a qualified team, is so important.

At IPE, we don’t just offer breaker maintenance. We also provide other kinds of electrical maintenance, including care for:

• Transformers. Transformers increase or decrease alternating current (AC) or voltage from one level to another. Proper maintenance can help prevent issues with loose connections, overheating, voltage creeping, corrosion and deterioration.
• Substations. Substations perform many tasks, including electrical generation, transmission and distribution. The primary purpose of a substation is to decrease high voltage electricity to lower voltage electricity. Proper maintenance of substations can help ensure all components interact correctly, ensuring a reliable source of power and a reduced risk of downtime.
• Protective relays. Protective relays continually monitor the power system to detect unwanted conditions and correct them. Maintaining protective relays helps ensure they are in a state of readiness and can correctly respond to any issues.

When the power goes “down,” life grinds to a halt. This is why proper maintenance of electrical equipment, including breaker maintenance, is so essential.

Make Sure Your Circuit Breakers Are Properly Maintained

Circuit breaker maintenance is a must if you want to keep your electrical systems running properly.

Our highly trained technicians will thoroughly test your circuit breakers and provide any maintenance or cleaning necessary. With IPE Canada, you can rest easy knowing that qualified professionals are taking care of your breaker maintenance.

Contact Us About Breaker Maintenance

To learn more about circuit breaker maintenance call IPE Canada at 844-762-1057 or contact us online.