Uptime is a critical metric for productivity and profitability in applications such as industrial automation, building automation, motion control, and process control. The downtimes are typically caused by maintenance, human errors, and equipment failures. The cost of repairs and lost productivity associated with downtimes can be very high depending on the industry and the nature of the event.
Maintenance- and human-error-related downtimes can or cannot be prevented, but the majority of the equipment-related failures are preventable. This article focuses on downtimes caused by power faults and how they can be prevented using the modern protection ICs in the power systems of these equipment.