The Siemens SENTRON 3VA1110-6MH36-0DD0 is a 3-pole molded case circuit breaker (MCCB) rated 100 A at 40 °C, designed specifically for starter protection — meaning it is built to coordinate with motor contactors and overload relays in a motor branch circuit, not just as a feeder breaker. Its headline breaking capacity is 220 kA at 240 V AC, which drops to 154 kA at 415 V and 121 kA at 440 V; at 500 V and 690 V it still clears 7.5 kA. That 220 kA figure at 240 V tells you this breaker can be installed on the line side of a panel with very high available fault current — common where the service transformer is close — without needing a current-limiting upstream device.
Rated current and thermal derating
The breaker holds its full 100 A rating from 40 °C up through 50 °C. At 55 °C it derates to 98 A, at 60 °C to 96 A, at 65 °C to 94 A, and at 70 °C to 91 A. For a panel builder or site engineer sizing a motor branch in a warm enclosure, that means you can still pull the full motor FLA (up to 100 A) through the breaker as long as the ambient inside the panel stays at or below 50 °C — no need to oversize the frame. Above 50 °C, the derating curve is shallow enough (roughly 0.4 A per °C) that you can still land a 90 A motor load at 70 °C without bumping to the next frame.
Physical fit and panel integration
The 3VA1110-6MH36-0DD0 measures 70 mm deep, 76.2 mm wide, and 130 mm tall — a compact 3-pole MCCB footprint that fits standard 3-inch-wide panel gutters. Mounting is via the SENTRON 3VA common backplate or DIN rail adapter (not included). The 76.2 mm width means it occupies three adjacent 25.4 mm DIN-rail module positions. For a retrofit into an existing panel that was built around a 3VA1110-5ED36-0AC0, the dimensions are identical — same depth, width, and height — so no rewiring or re-drilling is needed; it drops into the same mounting hole pattern and bus bar connection points.
Starter protection design and auxiliary releases
This breaker's design is explicitly for starter protection — it has a magnetic-only or thermal-magnetic trip curve optimized to ride through motor inrush (typically 6–8x FLA for a few cycles) while still providing short-circuit protection for the contactor and overload relay downstream. It ships with an undervoltage release (UVR) factory-installed, which drops the breaker open on loss of control voltage — a standard requirement for machinery safety circuits where you want the starter to drop out on a power dip or E-stop. The UVR is wired separately from the main power path. The breaker also comes with three auxiliary switches (HQ design) for remote status indication. The basic switch element is order code 3VA11106MH360AA0.