7 National and International Fuse Standards

The most important technical characteristics of low-voltage fuses are standardized globally
in the international standards IEC 60269-1 (and follow-up sections). This makes it easier to
select the right fuse and replace fuses. The European standards (EN) are largely identical to
IEC, although they may contain additional information relevant to European countries. With
just a few exceptions, the German standards (DIN VDE) and other national standards in
Europe are translations of the international standards.

Special rules relating to LV HRC and D fuses apply for low-voltage fuses. To prevent the
potentially hazardous confusion of fuses in different systems, a European harmonization
document instead of a European standard has been created for the fuses systems defined in
IEC 60269-2-1 and 60269-3-1. Although the document covers all of the IEC systems, these
do not necessarily have to be included in the national standards. For safety reasons, only the
LV HRC and D/D0 system have been included in the German standard DIN VDE 0636
(Table 7.1).
The table also includes certain VDE regulations that do not have an international equivalent.
This concerns:
• LV HRC fuses for transformer protection
• LV HRC fuses for protecting equipment in the mining industry
• 1000 V fuses for protecting electrical motor circuits
• NDz fuses with an E 16 thread up to 25 A
• D fuses up to 750 V for electric railways
• D fuses up to 500 V for the mining industry
• 690 V D0 fuses
• D0 fuse combination units

Table 7.1 takes into account the new structure (bold type) of IEC 60269 and VDE 0636.
Standards in parentheses are either no longer or not yet valid.

This new structure makes the standard much clearer because it now contains a maximum of
two parts (see below) where once it contained three:

• Part 1: ”General requirements”

• A follow-up section containing additional requirements for special conditions of use or
applications

They must be read together. In future, the ”Guidelines for the Applications of Low-Voltage
Fuses” will be included in the standard as Part 5. In addition to IEC 61818 (E VDE 0636-129),
this will contain IEC 61459, which has not yet been published in Germany.
Although it is not defined in any standards, the DL fuse system, which is manufactured on
the basis of an old East German factory standard, is still of importance to operators. This
relates to screw-in fuse-links of size E 16, which are not compatible, however, with the E 16
system (acc. to VDE 0635) and are also non-interchangeable.

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