| 摘要 |
A common power supply (20) is often used to provide power for actuating a plurality of circuit breakers (18a-18z) in response to actuation signals from remote control lines (16a-16z). But a large and expensive power supply (20) must be used to deliver enough power to actuate several circuit breakers simultaneously. Moreover, if the circuit breakers (18a-18z) are connected to large electrical loads (21a-21z) and are actuated simultaneously, then the line voltage (V1) will sag substantially. To solve these problems, a time-sharing device (14) enables respective ones of the circuit breakers to respond to their actuation signals only at different times. Preferably, the time-sharing device (14) polls each of the remote control lines (16a-16z) and delivers an actuation signal from each polled remote control line to a preselected number of circuit breakers (21a-21z) which are associated with the polled remote control line. In most instances a control line controls only one circuit breaker, although one control line may be used to control a small number of circuit breakers which typically would control the power delivered to related electrical loads. The power supply (20) is sized to actuate the largest number of circuit breakers that are associated with any one control line. Since the maximum number of circuit breakers that can be simultaneously actuated is limited to the largest preselected number, the size of the power supply is reduced without sacrificing system performance.
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