First Digital Circuit Breaker gets UL certification
Atom Power's SiC-based technology now certified for widespread commercial use
Atom Power, the US start-up behind the world's first digital circuit breaker, has announced that its technology is now listed by Underwriters Laboratories (UL), the governing standard for consumer safety.
The company's digital circuit breaker is based around a SiC transistor circuit that measures load current and switches the transistor off when the current level is dangerous. It works 3,000 times faster than traditional electromechanical circuit breakers - a technology that hasn't changed in over 140 years .
“Today, power is plentiful - renewable costs are falling, many structures have generators and batteries store more energy,” said Ryan Kennedy, CEO, Atom Power. “However, we’re missing a link that connects each source and manages the energy flow between it all. We need a new digital platform to dynamically and intelligently respond to this new era of power.”
“We’ve never seen such a leap in power innovation as the advent of digital circuit breakers,” said Denis Kouroussis, co-founder and CTO of Atom Power. “As the first team to successfully build this technology, we were subjected to more testing than any traditional breaker. We not only passed each rigorous evaluation, but surpassed expectations.”
Atom Power’s innovation captured industry attention, receiving investments from three of the four largest circuit breaker manufacturers — Siemens, ABB and Eaton.
“Siemens is proud to be on the forefront of energy innovation, and we’re committed to building partnerships with companies on the leading edge of electrification, automation and digitisation,” said John DeBoer, Director of eMobility and New Energy Business, Siemens. “Atom Power’s achievement of UL represents a great step toward the future of solid state electrical protection. We’re thrilled to support them as their technology is applied to critical problems facing the power industry across generation, distribution and consumption in the digital age.”
Atom Power’s intelligent product suite includes a circuit breaker (Atom Switch), distribution panel (Atom Panel) and software (Atom OS) that are said to form the fastest power distribution system ever, enabling circuit interruption capabilities up to 100,000-amps and reducing electrical explosion hazards to almost nothing.
