ABB celebrates 100 years of MCB manufacturing
ABB’s first-of-its-kind Miniature Circuit Breaker (MCB) reaches a milestone 100-year anniversary of protecting electrical circuits and while evolving to meet the sustainability needs of the future. Applied across all segments, MCBs help in protecting particularly vulnerable spaces, such as factories, data centres, homes, commercial spaces, transport infrastructure and more from electrical hazards. In India, ABB has been manufacturing these MCBs since 2001 in its Nelamangala factory, Bengaluru.
“We at ABB India are proud to be part of this 100-year old legacy of MCBs enhancing electrical safety in India and around the world. Our future-focused portfolio centres on achieving energy efficiency and transparent, sustainable practices. Our designs are compact, modular, and flexible, enabling buildings to be retrofitted and to integrate renewable energy sources, quickly and safely. These products are ‘Made in India’ at our state-of-the-art manufacturing facility equipped with automation technology for utmost precision and quality. These play a key role in ensuring the safe development of sustainable & modern communities, cities and urban landscapes for our future,” says Kiran Dutt, President Electrification, ABB India.
In 1918, ABB’s forerunner, Brown, Boveri & Cie (BBC), purchased Stotz Kontakt, an electrical supplier company based in Mannheim, Germany. The company’s founder, Hugo Stotz stayed on with BBC and, working with his chief engineer, Heinrich Schachtner, invented the first resettable MCB, a device that was patented in November 1924. Today, ABB has eight factories globally manufacturing MCBs with more than 100 million poles per year.
Nowadays, complete protection, including MCBs, Residual-current devices (RCD), Art Fault Detection Devices (AFDD), and Surge Protection Device (SPD), are providing increasingly higher performance, lower carbon footprint, and greater connectivity to increase energy efficiency and decarbonization.
