
World's First Digital Circuit Breaker Could Completely Change Our Powered World - howard941
https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a27557804/digital-circuit-breaker/
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tomatotomato37
The safety and improved switching speed is good, but why the fuck does it have
to connect to the internet? We already have a giant risk with both vulnerable
infrastructure connected to the internet and horrid IoT security practices;
the solution to that problem is not to combine both issues into a single
product.

Also I like how they are praising the potential energy savings of this and
then mention their next big hurdle is reducing thermal losses compared to
mechanical units, which pretty much implies it's turning your fusebox into a
shitty space heater

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HocusLocus
I'm dubious of this. To read

“Now I have no moving parts. Now I have the ability to connect things like
iPhones and iPads for remote power management, which increases safety and
improves efficiency. I can set the distribution panel to a schedule so the
flow of power is seamless, unlimited, and shifts between sources
automatically. You literally wouldn’t notice. The lights wouldn’t even
flicker.”

Note the "between sources" claim. Replacing mechanical separation with solid
state to interrupt a circuit is one thing. Switching between two (presumably
AC) sources is another.

Either he's talking about LOW voltage DC and being misleading while he also
discusses his company's circuit breaker... or he's actually proposing a
'transfer switch' that does NOT rely on mechanical separation.

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howard941
These folks have excellent marketing: Last week they had segments on CNN, this
week it's PM. Atom might be the world's first UL listed digital circuit
breaker, but it's absolutely not the first digital breaker (
[http://www.eaton.eu/Europe/Electrical/ProductsServices/Circu...](http://www.eaton.eu/Europe/Electrical/ProductsServices/CircuitProtection/DigitalCircuitBreakers/index.htm)
popped up as result #2 on DDG for ex) .

