According to the new EN60204-1, it is compulsory to protect wires on SELV-PELV lines from overcurrent. The standard requires that 24 Vdc overcurrent protections intervene by cutting out the failure before the control and command 24 Vdc falls below 21.6V, cutting off power to the controls and preventing the emergency and safety features from activating.
Under EN 60204-1 and EN 61131-1 and -2, overcurrent protection on SELV/PELV lines must be capable of isolating shorts within 10 ms and hazardous overcurrents within 5 s. The use of power supplies with a high output overcurrent capacity and fast, accurate protections facilitates fault isolation before the 24 V falls below 21.6 V, leaving the controls without power.

Fuses and magneto-thermal switches inserted on 24 Vdc lines have characteristic intervention I/ts that are not suitable for isolating
faults with the required speed and accuracy, while the fuses may be replaced with different types, affecting the behaviour of
the protection and the safety of the system.

The proper coordination of the circuit in which the overcurrent protection is inserted must consider the total R of the line as: R connections + R wires + R protection + R residual malfunctioning load. The total R must always allow a safe current to circulate
in the circuit once the protection is triggered and the protection should neither be undersized, to prevent undesirable bursts at peak load, nor oversized, to prolong its intervention t.

The entire circuit, including power supply, protection, wiring and connections, must be designed such that all overcurrents can be cut-off within 5 s before the 24 Vdc falls below 21.6 Vdc. This requirement can be met with Cabur’s CSF and CSG series power supplies, designed to provide a high output overcurrent (nom. I >+50% for > 5s) and CEP System electronic overcurrent protections with an accuracy and speed far superior to magneto-thermal switches and fuses, whose trigger t is independent of
ambient T and can be reset locally or remotely.

Protection features

MGTs have two different intervention curves: Thermal and magnetic. The magnetic relay only triggers in the event of a short with different I/t curves; thermal relays all have the same intervention curve regardless of the MGT curve and in the event of an
overload they behave as shown in figure 2: overload currents of 1.13 x In are cut in >1h, and at overcurrent > 1.45 x In, the trigger occurs in several minutes.
The disconnection of short-circuit currents is activated by the magnetic relay whose trigger t ranges from 0.01 to 0.1 s, and it occurs at very high currents which the power supply used may not be able to deliver: a C5 MGT used in DC has a safe trigger of > 70 A, a current which only (but not all) power supplies with a far higher nom. I, e.g. 40 A, are capable of providing, but which is not deliverable by 10 A power supplies.
Using MGT as an overcurrent protection, if the power supply used has an overload I 1.2 times greater than its nominal I, disconnection
will occur after 20…60 minutes, while with a current 2.5 times higher than the nominal I it will trigger after 25 s to 2 min., depending on the Tamb, times which are too long to guarantee stability at 24V to protect wiring and protection selectivity. In case of malfunction, until the protection triggers, the power supply remains in overload in excess of x 1.5 x 5 s and the 24 V falls below 21.6 V, leaving normal functions and particularly the safety functions without power.

Protection selectivity

In case of an overload or short, only the malfunctioning circuit is isolated from its protection without any effects on the power to the other loads. This feature is obtained using power supplies with a high overcurrent capacity and quick and precise protections.

CEP system – the smart current control system

CEP “recognises” overcurrent at the lowest and most precise threshold and isolates the malfunctioning circuit in the fastest possible time. For maximum flexibility of use, the CEP system allows you to set 10 trigger currents from 1 A to 10 A in 1 A increments, and has 3 intervention curves: “Rapid – Normal – Delayed” (see fig. 3). The protection status is indicated by two LEDs and a remote alarm transistor output, while the load can be activated/deactivated
using the button on the front (fig. 5) or controlled remotely by PLC. The ability to control individual channels separately is useful during installation since various components can be activated and tested individually, while in large plants, the remote control feature can be used to gradually activate the various loads, preventing multiple simultaneous overloads at system start-up.
An additional safety feature is manual disconnection, with which even when reactivating the protections remotely the load will remain inactive, preventing hazardous operating conditions.