Enhanced method and apparatus for protecting against bolted short, open neutral, and reverse polarity conditions in an electronic circuit

摘要

A protection circuit for generating current to activate a Trip Solenoid of a circuit breaker in response to a detected fault includes, an electrical connection from the circuit to a terminal of Solenoid; an electrical connection from the circuit to a Neutral wire; an electrical connection from the circuit to an Earth Ground wire; at least one voltage detection mechanism for detecting a fault condition; and at least one Transistor electrically accessible from at least one voltage detection mechanism for generating current to activate the Trip Solenoid. In operation of the circuit one of at least one voltage detection mechanism detects a voltage anomaly between Neutral and Earth Ground and activates one of at least one Transistor to generate a source-to-ground current, the generated current traveling through the Trip Solenoid and the protection circuit to Earth Ground, the generated current sufficient to activate the Trip Solenoid thereby opening the circuit breaker.