VADODARA INSTITUTE OF ENGINEERING

Prepared By:
Deepak Chawda (160800119007)
Akash Chaurasia (160800119008)
Stanley Christy (160800119009)
Shivam Dave (160800119010)

Guided By:
Prof. Rajan Modha
Earth Leakage Circuit
Breaker
(ELCB)
 An Earth Leakage Circuit
Breaker (ELCB) is a device used to directly
detect
. currents leaking to earth from an
installation and cut the power .
There are two types of ELCBs:

1. Voltage Earth
Leakage Circuit
Breaker (voltage-ELCB)
2. Current Earth Leakage
Current Earth Leakage Circuit Breaker
(Current-ELCB).
 The ELCB detects fault currents
from
live to the earth (ground) wire within
the
installation it protects. If sufficient
voltage
appears across the ELCB’s sense coil, it
will
switch off the power, and remain off until
manually reset. A voltage-sensing ELCB
 The
way to identify an ELCB is by
looking for green or green and
yellow earth wires entering the
device. They rely on voltage
returning to the trip via the
earth wire during a fault and
afford only limited protection to
the installation and no personal
protection at all. You should use
plug in 30mA RCD’s for any
appliances and extension leads
 Advantages

ELCBs have one advantage over RCDs:

they are less sensitive to fault
conditions, and therefore have fewer
nuisance trips.
.
While voltage and current on the earth
line is usually fault current from a live
wire, this is not always the case, thus
there are situations in which an ELCB
When an installation has two connections
to earth, a nearby high current lightning
strike will cause a voltage gradient in the
soil, presenting the ELCB sense coil with
enough voltage to cause it to trip.
.
If the installation’s earth rod is placed
close to the earth rod of a neighboring
building, a high earth leakage current in
the other building can raise the local
ground potential and cause a voltage
difference across the two earths, again
 Disadvantages

They do not detect faults that

don’t
pass current through the CPC to the earth
rod.

They do not allow a single

building
system to be easily split into multiple
sections with
independent fault protection, because
earthing
 They may be tripped by
external voltages from something
connected to the earthing system such as
metal pipes, a TN-S earth or a TN-C-S
combined neutral and earth.

As electrically leaky
appliances such as some water heaters,
washing machines and cookers may cause
the ELCB to trip.

ELCBs introduce additional

Thank you