What is the difference between circuit breakers and fuses?

Many people are of the opinion that all fuses will eventually be replaced with circuit breakers. It is true that many traditional fuse markets have now converted to circuit breakers (eg. domestic) and that the global fuse market is slowly shrinking however fuses provide many advantages over circuit breakers and will be a necessary & viable product range for decades to come.

Circuit breakers are basic mechanical switches that 'trip' once the current exceeds a particular level. In most cases, they can be re-set and be used again where a fuse has to be completely replaced once it has blown.

Circuit breakers have the following advantages over fuses:

• They can be re-set in some circumstances and used again.
• They are very cheap.
• They can handle all of the general purpose, non-specific, low potential fault current applications.

Fuses have the following advantages over circuit breakers:

• Fuses are safe. They have extremely high breaking capacities and can therefore withstand very high fault currents without rupturing. Circuit breakers tend to get damaged when high amounts of energy pass through them. In some cases, circuit breakers trip but their internals melt and 'fuse' causing them to be 'live' when technicians attempt to touch them.
• Properly applied, fuses prevent 'blackouts'. Only the fuse nearest the fault opens without upstream fuses being affected. Fuses can provide selective co-ordination.
• Fuses provide optimum component protection by keeping fault currents to a low value.
• Fuses can act fast enough to protect semiconductor components.

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