The types of relays used across industries

These are initially used to be a circuit breaker when a fault presents itself, these are designed to protect further damage to internal components of electrics. Relays come in two forms, electromechanical which is the predecessor to the now more and cost efficient popular micro processor based relays. The latter provides a higher degree of protection and control that simply can’t be achieved with a singular electro mechanical relay, in some cases it would require two or three of these types of devices to achieve the desired application or level of control that one can get with the micro processor based device, again proving to be more efficient across the board.

The electro mechanical relay

Mainly consisting of magnetic core wrapped in wire, contacts, armature and yoke, these are still widely used for there sturdy nature and long life. They utilize induction to perform the tasks they are mainly used for. The main advantage of these is that they are both physically and electrically separate from the circuits they are put in to control. An interesting aspect to these devices is that they helped create the path for the modern information age. The simple binary status of these relays is what has helped machines communicate and increase their speed and accuracy.

The micro processor based relay

These are mainly used in electrical transmission and distribution systems, also known as digital protective relays, they are usually a computer system running algorithms to aid in the detection of electrical faults. These are mainly used over the electro mechanical varieties as they are able to perform multiple functions, which can range from self testing, communications and metering functions. There are numerous applications for this type of relay as follows;

• Data Displays
• Monitoring  parameters set by software or end user
• Logic processing of equations set by engineers

Those are just a few applications of relays used across industries, offering many different types of protection for all different systems.