160 A MCCB with ETU850 — line protection for distribution panels
The Siemens SENTRON 3VA2116-5KP36-0AA0 is a 3-pole molded case circuit breaker rated for 160 A continuous current, built around the ETU850 electronic trip unit. It's designed for line protection in main or feeder distribution panels, not motor branch circuits — the ETU850 gives you adjustable long-time, short-time, instantaneous, and ground-fault protection curves, which is what you need for selective coordination downstream. Breaking capacity is the headline here: 187 kA at 240 V, 121 kA at 415/440 V, 75.6 kA at 500 V, and still 3.7 kA at 690 V. That 187 kA at 240 V means it handles high-fault utility feeds without cascading upstream — critical for service-entrance or transformer-secondary applications where available fault current is high. Thermal derating is flat across the board: full 160 A from 40 °C through 70 °C ambient, so no need to oversize for a warm enclosure. The insulation voltage is rated 800 V, and the front face carries IP40 protection — fine for indoor panel mounting, not for washdown environments.
Panel fit and integration
Footprint is 105 mm wide by 181 mm tall by 86 mm deep — that's a standard 4-pitch wide MCCB form factor for DIN-rail or panel-mount. The 86 mm depth means it clears most 200 mm deep enclosures with room for rear busbars or cable ducts. Communication function is built in, so you can integrate it with a BMS or SCADA system for remote monitoring and trip-event logging — no separate module required for basic connectivity. The ETU850 supports this natively.