Schneider Electric has launched its new MasterPacT MTZ Active range of circuit breakers in South Africa. This is a revolutionary new circuit breaker designed to set new benchmarks for safety, efficiency and sustainability while ensuring business continuity. These circuit breakers are helping customers to meet daily challenges such as 24/7 uptime demand, while managing spiralling energy costs in an electrically driven and digitised world.
Kamogelo Makwana, power products offer manager at Schneider Electric South Africa, explains that this is Schneider Electric’s latest offering to accelerate energy efficiency and decarbonisation, optimising asset life without compromising functionality or safety. “The MasterPacT MTZ Active brings features that enables facility managers to monitor and measure power usage in real time,” he says.
Across industry sectors ranging from healthcare, buildings and energy to chemicals and OEMs, power is becoming more distributed and more complex to manage, especially with the current context of compromised power availability and reliability from the national grid, forcing industry to consider the addition of other power sources to complement the grid. This adds complexity to managing power, and the MTZ Active is ready to act in assisting industry to manage this complexity.
At the same time, companies expect electricity to be available 24/7, and for good reason. Experts at the Uptime Institute assess that outages can cost businesses over $100 000. Ensuring the safety of installers, operators and maintenance personnel is also a priority. When outages do occur, they are becoming more expensive, a trend that is likely to continue as dependency on digital services increases. With more than two thirds of all outages costing more than $100 000, the business case for investing more in resiliency and training is becoming stronger.
Safety-enhancing innovations
Makwana notes that the MasterPacT MTZ Active features safety-enhancing innovations to help protect electrical contractors, building occupants maintenance personnel and property. Its Energy Reduction Maintenance (ERMS) setting, which is natively embedded in its intuitive control unit, sets a new benchmark in safety to improve the protection of maintenance operators and personnel from arc flash hazards.
Together with the native ERMS feature, the infield selectivity check ensures that there is full selectivity achieved in the installation, ensuring faster fault clearance and helping to prevent equipment damage, thus improving safety.
“This product is a more digitised circuit breaker solution with wireless connectivity features achieved through embedded Bluetooth, NFC and groundbreaking Zigbee technology, allowing customers to communicate with the breaker efficiently and to save on costs associated with a wired communication design. The key benefit of digitising this unit is enabling faster response times,” he says. “Customers can now remotely view and interact with the breaker, thanks to the availability of digital modules and the digital-ready breaker. This enables real-time data access for maintenance planning and safety, eliminating the need for on-site status checks.”
Quick action during outage
Knowing the root cause of an outage allows quick action to restore power and resume normal operations instead of having to endure lengthy and costly delays. The MasterPacT MTZ circuit breaker combines real-time information and ease of use to enable fast mitigation of outage events.
Makwana also points out that the new MasterPacT MTZ’s innovative control unit, MicroLogic Active, monitors various breaker functions to provide vital, real-time information. “In the event of an electrical fault, the breaker lets you scan a QR code, displayed on the LCD screen of the control unit. This is an industry-first QR code solution, providing quick access guidance on the best actions to take based on the trip’s root cause,” he says.
Designed for circularity, MasterPacT MTZ Active breakers can be refurbished by Schneider Electric for a second life with their original guarantee, thereby reducing waste and promoting sustainability. Additionally, the lifecycle of installed MasterPacT NT/NW breakers can now be extended simply by upgrading their trip unit with MTZ Active’s electronic control. By avoiding the replacement of the entire breaker, costs are reduced and waste is minimised.
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