Patent ID: 7499251

Claim:
An arcing fault protection system for a plurality of feeder circuits, each of the feeder circuits being electrically connected to a source bus and carrying an electric current toward one or more downstream loads, the source bus being connected to a power source for carrying current from the power source to the feeder circuits, the arcing fault protection system comprising: a low voltage power switchgear apparatus having: a) a first current sensor for monitoring source bus current; b) a plurality of second current sensors for monitoring current of each of the plurality of feeder circuits; c) a comparator for comparing the source bus current to a sum of the feeder circuits current and outputting a first arcing fault detection signal indicative of a presence of arcing fault currents; and d) an arc diverter for arresting arcing fault currents by the grounding of the source bus, the arc diverter being responsive to the first arcing fault detection signal.