Lately we had to turn off the breaker for the living room which also has our desks with lots of electronics a few times. There’s our computers, printer, screens, work stuff… you name it. And of course it’s all connected to just one single wall socket since there just aren’t more close by. Generally that’s not a problem since all those devices have very low power consumption – all together, when everything is switched on, it’s less than 500 watts. But when the breaker was switched off and is turned on again, all the power supplies together produce a huge inrush power spike. I needed a solution because unplugging everything and plugging them in one after another is not a valid option. After checking out several options of inrush limiting devices I decided to use one from Camtec – a German company which produces the ESB 101. I ordered that, a small breaker box plus an additional switch and a status light.
The circuitry is quite simple – the line is going through the switch into the ESB 101 and then to the status light and the outgoing connections while the neutral and PE wires are just connected with each other. Since the overall power consumtion is very low it’s all connected by normal 230V power plugs to keep it modular.
After mounting everything it just went into the prepared box which got mounted to our desk and everything got plugged in again. And that was the first time in ages I could switch on everything at once without the breaker turning into a flash bang ๐
