Dictionary of Electrical Engineering

Commonly used terms in the Electrical industry.

fuse saving
the practice of tripping distribution line reclosers or circuit breakers on a fast trip to beat sectionalizing fuses that are protecting laterals. The following re-close will restore all load. If the fault remains following the fast trip(s), subsequent slow trip(s) will allow the fuse to operate on a permanent fault on the lateral. Fuse saving decreases the customer outage rate but causes more sags to customers in a fault situation.