Hot & Cold Load Factor — Relay Education Simulator

The total current flowing on the feeder at any instant — the value the relay is actually watching. In the simulation it is computed as the sum of active load draws plus a noise term: activeCount × 22 A + noise + 60 A base. During a cold surge it scales proportionally toward the surge peak as all loads pile on simultaneously. This is the number compared against whichever pickup threshold is active.

The relay's normal overcurrent threshold, sized for typical diversified load. Set at 420 A — comfortably above the normal hot-load range (~200–320 A with healthy diversity) but low enough to retain fault sensitivity. If feeder current exceeds this value while the relay is in hot mode, it times out and trips the breaker.

The elevated threshold the relay switches to immediately after a reclose following an outage. Set at 680 A to ride through the coincident-demand surge that occurs when all loads re-energize simultaneously. Driven by a timer: once the timer expires and diversity is restored, the relay drops back to the hot pickup setting.

Which of the two pickup thresholds the relay is currently using. This is not simply the higher value — it is driven by context logic. A detected reclose following an outage arms the cold pickup and starts a timer. When the timer expires the relay reverts to hot mode. The relay is tracking what just happened, not just measuring instantaneous current.

Computed as 1 − (activeLoads / totalLoads). A value near 1.0 indicates loads are well staggered — only a fraction on at any time, the normal diversified condition. Near 0 means most or all loads are coincident, as happens right after a reclose or during the EV surge. The bar fills left-to-right as diversity decreases. In real system planning this factor directly influences feeder and transformer sizing — you do not need to build for the sum of all individual peaks if diversity prevents them from coinciding.

Elapsed seconds since the feeder was de-energized. Longer outages mean more thermal cycling — water heaters cool, thermostat deadbands reset, motor thermal memory clears — so the longer the outage the more aggressive and sustained the cold load surge on restoration. A brief outage may produce only a modest surge; a 30-minute outage on a winter morning can produce a surge severe enough to damage transformers and trip protection if cold load pickup logic is not properly set.