Fuses beat breakers in billion-dollar building

New York City's new Time Warner Center near Central Park relies on fuses from Cooper Bussman, St. Louis (www.bussmann.com), to meet city electrical codes that would have been an expensive proposition with standard fused circuit breakers.

New York City electrical code requires selective coordination of overcurrent-protection devices to handle short-circuit currents of 200 kA. Selective coordination means the protective device nearest the faulted circuit opens, protecting that circuit, while the rest of the system stays energized. This prevents a blackout in the electrical system. Current-limiting fuses do the job, which would be nearly impossible with molded-case circuit breakers.

The circuit-protection system has 25 switchboards from 1.2 to 4 kA, all containing fusible switches, 500 panel boards, 75 plug-in busway switches, and 1,900 Cooper-Bussman Low-Peak fuses.

- Miles Budimir