Understanding the Advantages of Busbar Trunking

Your electrical installations are an important part of your home or your business premise, and although you will not put a lot of thought into your electrical installations on a daily basis they are an integral part of your life. Busbar trunking, also known as bus bar or bussbar, is a far more effective way to distribute power around your home or commercial premise than standard wiring, a busbar being a strip of aluminium, brass, or copper that conducts electric current within a switchboard, battery bank, substation, or distribution board.

Busbar trunking can effectively conduct substantial currents of electricity, making it a far more effective alternative than standard wiring. The amount of current that can be carried across a busbar is determined by the size of its cross-section, and they can vary in size enormously. A small busbar found in a home installation may be as small as 10mm squared; in an electrical substation however you may find busbar tubes that are as large as tubes with a 50mm diameter.

An example of a very large busbar used in busbar trunking is an aluminium smelter, these large bars being capable of carrying many thousands of amperes at once that will allow for the production of aluminium from salts in their molten form. Busbar trunking therefore generally uses hollow tubes of flat strips, the high surface area of the busbars allowing for a more efficient distribution of electricity and dissipation of heat.

In busbar trunking, the busbars used will need to be strong, the forces impacted on them being high; in fact as well as being able to support their own weight the busbars need to be able to stand the force of earthquakes as well as standard mechanical vibrations. You will find busbar trunking installations in panel boards, in busbay enclosures, and in switchboards. The bars are always protected by a cover, and they allow for the introduction of new circuits anywhere along their length and not just at the main power supply; you can think of busbar trunking as being a “plug and play” system for your electrical installations.

Busbars can be connected to one another with welded connection as well as with clamps and bolts. When high voltages are being passed along the electrical circuits, special connections will be used that will withstand the voltage that are generally silver-plated. As a replacement for traditional wiring, Busbar trunking requires no panel board, and is a far more simple and effective way to instantly add devices to your electrical circuits.

There are many benefits of using a busbar electrical installation as opposed to a standard electrical installation, and these include the simplicity with which they can allow for new equipment to instantly be plugged in to the circuit and the improved overall performance of the electrical circuit. With the ability to add and take away tap-off connections as and when necessary, it provides a far more efficient way supply electrical current as and where necessary to all your equipment or machinery without risk of overloading the circuits in a way that is often found when standard wiring is used.