Basics and general principles
This chapter focus on basics and general principles of switchgear. A fundamental question is the type of question that children specialise in asking, and, in order to respond correctly and fully, you have to give the subject more thought than would otherwise be the case. My grandchildren specialise in these sorts of thought provoking questions and, as I am sure that all readers are familiar with the function of gooseberry bushes, I shall confine myself to try to address the fundamental question 'Why do we have switchgear?'. Certain electrical distribution customer's senior engineers used to go out of their way to say that switchgear was a necessary evil. It cost money to buy, install and maintain and that it did not earn any revenue. This is clearly an oversimplification as the end user only buys electrical power, so anything that makes that possible must contribute to that end. These customer's engineers did, however, concede that switchgear was necessary to isolate equipment that became faulty, and they could allow the system to be split into sections to allow quick restoration of power supplies. While electricity distribution systems are relatively passive, for example, the situation in a factory, particularly one using manufacturing processes, or in a generating station can be active, the switchgear takes a critical part in controlling what is taking place. So, switchgear is needed: (a) to isolate faulty equipment; (b) to divide large networks into sections for repair purposes; (c) to reconfigure networks in order to restore power supplies; and (d) to control other equipment.
Basics and general principles, Page 1 of 2
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