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Trip Circuit Supervision

Last updated October 25, 2020 by Electrical4U

There are different contacts connected in series

along a trip circuit of an electrical circuit breaker.
There must be some situation when the circuit
breaker should not trip even a faulty current
passes through its power contacts. Such situations
are low gas pressure in SF6 circuit breaker, low air
pressure in pneumatic operated circuit breaker
etc. In this situation the trip coil of the CB must not
be energized to trip the CB. So there must be NO
contacts associated with gas pressure and air
pressure relays, connected in series with breaker
trip coil. Another scheme of trip coil is that it
should not be re energized once the circuit
breaker is opened. That is done by providing one
NO contact of breaker auxiliary switch in series
with trip coil. In addition to that the trip circuit of
a CB has to pass through considerable numbers of
intermediate terminal contacts in relay, control
panel and circuit breaker kiosk.

So if any of the intermediate contacts is detached,

the circuit breaker fails to trip. Not only that, if DC
supply to the trip circuit fails, the CB will not trip.
To overcome this abnormal situation, trip circuit
supervision becomes very necessary. The figure
below shows the simplest form of trip circuit
healthy scheme. Here a series combination of one
lamp, one push bottom and one resistor is
connected across the protective relay contact as
shown. In healthy situation all the contacts except
protective relay contact are in close position. Now
if push bottom (PB) is pressed, the trip circuit
supervision network is completed and lamp glows
indicating that the breaker is ready for tripping.

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The above scheme is for supervision while circuit
breaker is closed. This scheme is called post close
supervision. There is another supervision scheme
which is called pre and post close supervision.

This trip circuit supervision scheme is also quite

simple. The only difference is that here in this
scheme, one NC contact of same auxiliary switch is
connected across the auxiliary NO contact of the
trip circuit. The auxiliary NO contact is closed
when CB is closed and auxiliary NC contact is
closed when CB is open and vice versa. Hence, as
shown in the figure below when the circuit
breaker is closed the trip circuit supervision
network is completed via auxiliary NO contact but
when the circuit breaker is open the same
supervision network is completed via NC contact.
The resistor is used series with the lamp for
preventing unwanted tripping of circuit breaker
due to internal short circuit caused by failure of
the lamp.
So far whatever we have discussed it is only for
locally controlled installation but for a distance
control installation, relay system is necessary. The
figure below shows the trip circuit supervision
scheme wherever a remote signal is required.

When trip circuit is healthy and circuit breaker is

closed, relay A is energized which closes the NO
contact A1 and hence relay C is energized.
Energized relay C keeps NC contact in open
position. Now if the circuit breaker is open, relay B
is energized which closes No contact B1 hence
relay C is energized. As C is energized, it keeps the
NC contact C1 in open position. While CB is closed,
 if there is any discontinuity in the trip circuit relay
A is de-energized which opens contact A1 and
consequently relay C is de-energized and which
make the NC contact C1 in close position and hence
alarm circuit is actuated. Trip circuit supervision
is experienced by relay B with the circuit breaker
is open in a similar manner as relay A with the
circuit breaker is closed. Relays A and C are time-
delayed by copper slugs to prevent spurious
alarms during tripping or closing operations. The
resistors are mounted separately from the relays
and their values are chosen such that if any one
component is inadvertently short-circuited, a
tripping operation will not take place.

The alarm circuit supply should be separated from

main trip supply so that the alarm can be actuated
even the trip supply failed.

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