Circuit Breakers Blog – Expert Safety and Usage Information

Three answers, NO and NO and NO.  This is a big deal for us. MIDWEST does not sell old, used, or obsolete circuit breakers, bus plugs, transformers or other electrical equipment to an end user, ie the consumer, unless it has been properly serviced, reconditioned, tested, and passed Quality Controls.  We strongly recommend no one buys old electrical equipment “as is.”  That could be very dangerous. There are many “listing” companies and auction type sites that sell “as is.”  For example, eBay does not warranty the used and old electrical equipment sold through their service.  They provide a great service, but they do not provide a warranty on the specific used electrical equipment sold on eBay.  The same may be true with services that just list equipment.  The only people MIDWEST will sell electrical equipment “as it,” are other qualified electrical dealers that have proper Quality Controls.  Old, used, or obsolete circuit breakers, bus plugs, transformers, and switchgear have too many dangerous failure modes to be sold without proper testing.  MIDWEST does not just process orders.  Anybody can do that.  And many do.  We actually have a name for that.  We call it TC, Trained Chimpanzee, work.  You could train a chimpanzee to put old circuit breakers into a box. 

We add value.  Our staff of engineers and technicians service, repair, recondition, and test electrical equipment for a living.  We’ve done it for over 30 years.  That is what we do day after day. And it is what we think others should do if they are going to sell something.  “As Is” is just scary.  When electrical equipment gets unhappy, it can fail with a boom and a flash.  And that can hurt.

Buy Medium Voltage Air Circuit Breakers

We have always said, if you can’t do any maintenance on your circuit breakers, then at least exercise them whenever you have a chance.  All circuit breakers, whether Square D, GE, Westinghouse, anyone’s, are much more reliable if they are exercised.  High voltage or low voltage, they all need to be exercised.  It’s the cheapest, easiest maintenance there is.   It may not be real sophisticated, but it sure works.  We saw this proven again during a plant maintenance shutdown. In this case the medium voltage vacuum circuit breakers had not been touched for 5 years, outdoors, cold winters, no heaters.  Nearly all the lubricated mechanical operating parts were very stiff and many of the circuit breakers just would not operate.   The good news is the breakers would have tripped open, but nobody in their plant was going to get many of them to close again. It was an old fashioned job of cleaning off the hardened lubricant and re-lubricating cautiously.  Too much lubricant is a big problem in many facilities, especially one that does maintenance twice a decade.  And one more note.  Certain large old molded case circuit breakers, especially those used as main breakers, are extremely vulnerable to stiffing up if they are not operated a few times.