US Patent Issued to S&C Electric on Sept. 30 for "Dropout recloser" (Illinois Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 30 -- United States Patent no. 12,431,701, issued on Sept. 30, was assigned to S&C Electric Co. (Chicago).

"Dropout recloser" was invented by Richard G. Smith (North Aurora, Ill.), Yujian Zhou (Chicago), Jorge Montante (Chicago), Alejandro Montenegro (Chicago) and Michael Ross (Chicago).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A dropout recloser is capable of in accordance with its operating programming after a predetermined number of fault interrupting operations, e.g., 1, 2, 3 or more but typically 3, to drop out of a cutout and hang freely in a hinge contact of the cutout providing sectionalization with an observable visible gap. The recloser includes fault interrupting and rec...