Breaker lifespan??

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zog

zog

Senior Member
Location
Charlotte, NC
tonytonon said:
I remember the time when (working for a testing co) I was racking out a 4000A 480V FPE air frame main breaker from a switchboard with xfmr energized on line side. No PPE back then!! All of a sudden while racking we heard a loud "Clunk", we all looked at each other.....WTF!! :eek:
When we got the breaker out we found that the line side phase B Stab (looks like a heavy copper pipe) fell off the back of the breaker (broken weld.) :jawdrop:This is a pole piece that engages the stationary fingers. Had it gone phase to phase on the line side, I would not be telling this story......yeah..!
ask me what I think of FPE...!!
Click to expand...

One of these? There are still a lot of these out there in service, we get a lot of them that come in for repairs. photo_copy.jpg
 
ATSman

ATSman

ATSman
Location
San Francisco Bay Area
Occupation
Electrical Engineer/ Electrical Testing & Controls
High Energy Fault Level

High Energy Fault Level

tonytonon said:
I dug this up from an earlier post you can copy and paste:

http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa80/chris_kennedy/FPEWarning.jpg

I recall seeing a warning letter put out by FPE (by the insistance of their lawyers, no doubt) in the late 70's early 80's stating the same thing as the above label, not to reset a tripped molded case breaker with specific frame types. These were large industrial panels in TELCO central offices
with MCBs in the 100-800A range. I tried searching but could not find the letter (maybe someone can help.)
I remember the time when (working for a testing co) I was racking out a 4000A 480V FPE air frame main breaker from a switchboard with xfmr energized on line side. No PPE back then!! All of a sudden while racking we heard a loud "Clunk", we all looked at each other.....WTF!! :eek:
When we got the breaker out we found that the line side phase B Stab (looks like a heavy copper pipe) fell off the back of the breaker (broken weld.) :jawdrop:This is a pole piece that engages the stationary fingers. Had it gone phase to phase on the line side, I would not be telling this story......yeah..!
ask me what I think of FPE...!!
Click to expand...

I would like to hear from the PE's out there to calculate the available fault current on the line side of this 4000A main breaker.:happyyes:
 
W

woodturner9

Member
Location
Pennsylvania
Jraef said:
FPE equipment was notorious for it's tendency to start fires.
Click to expand...

While FPE panels are often blamed for fires, there is some disagreement over whether they really are as failure prone as claimed. I'm not sure we will ever know the objective facts.

From the incident reports, it appears that many or perhaps most of the panels that caught fire were overloaded and possibly installed improperly. I think it's a good idea to replace them - I have an FPE panel in a home I own and will replace it at some point - but I'm not convinced it's an urgent, crisis level issue.

I'm more concerned about the panel in this home not having a main breaker :eek:hmy: . Not sure if that was typical for FPE breakers, but given the "improvements" the prior owner made to this house, my guess is that he got a bargain or someone gave him an FPE branch panel.

Definitely agree, though, that buying new breakers for the FPE panel is not a great idea - better to put the money toward replacing the panel.
 
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