²⁷One way to help clarify the function of a protective relay is to envision circuit protection without one. Household and low-current industrial circuit breakers are constructed to have their own internal current-sensing elements (either thermal or magnetic) to force the circuit breaker open automatically when current exceeds a pre-set limit. With protective relays, the circuit breaker instead has a “trip coil” which will cause the breaker to trip when energized. The breaker then relies entirely on the (external) protective relay to tell it when to trip. By relegating the function of event detection to a sophisticated, external relay, the circuit breaker may act much “smarter” in protecting against a wider variety of faults and abnormal conditions than if it relied entirely on its own internal overcurrent-sensing mechanism.