The New Residual Current Protective Devices Operating by Resistive Leakage Current

The conventional Residual Current Protective Devices(RCD, or earth leakage circuit breaker, ELB) operates depending on the total leakage current which is the vector-sum of resistive and capacitive components of a leakage current. However, the electric disaster such as electric shock or fire is mainly caused by the resistive component. Therefore, in this view point, the RCD is more realistic when it operates by the resistive component of the leakage current. In this paper, a new algorithm for measuring the resistive leakage current from the total leakage current is suggested, and is realized to an actual circuit. According to the suggested algorithm, the resistive component of the leakage current can be found by integrating the total leakage current over only a half cycle of the line voltage, and it is realized by using analog switches and resettable integrators. It is confirmed through experiments that the suggested algorithm detects, within maximum average error of 6.74%, the resistive leakage current from the total leakage current, and the RCD employing the suggested algorithm brakes the circuit within the regular interrupt time(30msec).