Tripping Breaker when power outage

friendlytortus said:

Is there a way to make the breaker trip when the power goes out? so when the power is restored the breaker remains off?

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You would need a shunt trip style breaker along with a voltage monitor to shunt trip it in case of brownout or blackout.

To do this, turn off the breaker by simply pushing the circuit breaker handle towards the outside of the panel, away from the center, and then turn it back on. That requires that you push the circuit breaker handle back towards the center of the panel.

If this is simply a safety issue (for instance with machinery not restarting after an outage), you can buy a commercial magnetic switch that will open during a power outage.

Mark

busman said:

If this is simply a safety issue (for instance with machinery not restarting after an outage), you can buy a commercial magnetic switch that will open during a power outage.

Mark

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Thats exactly what im looking for. How exactly is something like this installed? Like a regular Breaker?

Using an electrically held contactor is not the same thing as a breaker.

The contactor would be mounted in a separate enclosure, and the circuit would need it to be energized in order for it to operate the utilization equipment.

You would have to wire control circuit through said contactor, and make it manually activated each time the power is restored.

For a single phase load, a 3-pole relay that has the control coil wired through the 3rd pole with a momentary push button switch wired across the 3rd pole would do the trick.

A normally-closed push button wired in the same control circuit could act as a "stop" switch as well.

Try woodworking supply places. Link below has some. They don't mount in the loadcenter, they just replace the regular switch on the machine.

http://www.busybeetools.com/categories/Shop-Essentials/Switches/

Mark

friendlytortus said:

Is there a way to make the breaker trip when the power goes out? so when the power is restored the breaker remains off?

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Well yes there is !
It's called a "power fail relay"
What are you tring to protect ?
One machine or a whole house ?

We have chickens they need heat lamps on and water bowl heaters. The eletricity outage threw the timers for them off the correct times. My neighbor , who is elderly and watches our chickens often when i travel can not reach the timers (nor do i want him climbing to reach them). The outage throws the timers off and i want him to have the ability to just throw a breaker to restore power, even if the heat lamps need to stay on all the time. I cant afford to loose my chickens to the cold.

I dont really time to re-wire the coop right now because i will be traveling a lot these next few months.

friendlytortus said:

We have chickens they need heat lamps on and water bowl heaters. The eletricity outage threw the timers for them off the correct times. My neighbor , who is elderly and watches our chickens often when i travel can not reach the timers (nor do i want him climbing to reach them). The outage throws the timers off and i want him to have the ability to just throw a breaker to restore power, even if the heat lamps need to stay on all the time. I cant afford to loose my chickens to the cold.

I dont really time to re-wire the coop right now because i will be traveling a lot these next few months.

Click to expand...

Most of the modern digital type timers have a back up battery inside them,
this powers the digital clock, so if the power goes out for a short time,
and then comes back on, then it is NOT affectted,
and will resume normal service when power returns.
You need to change your timer !
To one with a battery back up !

understood....but i still want the breaker ability..

I still dont quite understand why you want it ?
If the power goes off while your away,
Then if left alone, it should come back on
when power is restored.
Why does someone have to play with the breakers ?
Am I missing something ?

Thanks for the answers i did end up buying a digital timer.

Just for the record....since we are not talking about a lot of current....a typical 2 pole single throw relay would work.

You wire power to one set of terminals....you then wire a pushbutton from hot to one side of the relay coil. You connect one of side of the second set of contacts to hot (before the PB). The other side of the contact is wired back to the coil (in parallel with the PB).

When you press the pushbutton....the relay is energized. Because one set of contacts is wired to hot and the coil...when you let go of the pushbutton, the contacts keep power on the relay coil which keeps it energized. When power is lost, the relay opens and stays open until the pushbutton is pressed again.