Electrical Protection in Trains & Planes

In today’s digital world there is increased availability of power outlets for laptops and smartphones etc. for passengers.

People charging phones, laptops, iPads and so on means the industry has had to develop protection technology for a whole new environment where shock risk now exists.

Trains nowadays must be fitted with RCD protection technology, typically at a local protection level. There are two types of protection associated with an RCD – Global and Local. Global will protect an entire installation with a single RCD. If there is a fault anywhere on the installation the RCD will trip and remove power from everything.

In the case of local protection, we would generally fit an RCD at socket level. In the event of a fault the socket based RCD will trip but it will only remove power from the socket and not the rest of the installation.

This is particularly important when looking at protection for trains. In a carriage for example there may be a socket where a fault develops, where the user has faulty equipment that is plugged into the socket and creates a shock risk. In this case the RCD will trip. It is vital however that power is only disconnected from that socket and not any adjacent socket or sockets in other carriages.

At Western Automation we can provide RCD protection specifically designed for planes and trains etc.