Advantages and disadvantages of fuses.

    The fuse is a component of an electrical circuit that protects electrical devices from overloads and short circuits. It is one of the simplest and least expensive tools for cutting off an electrical circuit when there is a short circuit or an excessive overload of current.    

    When a short-circuit defect occurs, a circuit breaker can immediately cut off the circuits. The same purpose can also be carried out by a fuse, however it has advantages and disadvantages. We shall discuss the benefits and drawbacks of fuse in this essay.

Fuse Vs Circuit breaker

    In low voltage systems up to 400 V and high voltage systems up to 66 KV, it is utilized for overload or short circuit protection. Their use is sometimes limited to applications where their performance factors are not particularly suited to the current interruption.

Advantages of fuse:

1. It is the electrical protection method that costs the least.

2. It doesn't require any maintenance.

3. It has the ability to break strong short-circuit currents without causing any sound or smoke.

4. It does not have any  extra mechanism for automatic functioning, unlike a circuit breaker, which makes it more simple.

Disadvantages of fuse:

1. After each operation, rewiring or installing a new fuse requires a lot of time.

2. The current-time characteristics of a fuse and the protected device may not always be correlated.

3. It is possible to distinguish between fuses connected in series when there is a large disparity in the size of the fuses involved.