ABB Emax 2 Ekip Connect: Communication and Digital Features Guide

What is ABB Ekip Connect? ABB Ekip Connect is a communication and measurement module integrated into Emax 2 air circuit breakers — rated 400–6300 A under IEC 60947-2 — that exposes real-time protection, metering, and diagnostic data over industrial fieldbus and Ethernet protocols. Selecting an incompatible protocol stack or misreading the ±0.5% measurement accuracy class can produce integration failures, unreliable energy audits, or gaps in IEC 62443 cybersecurity compliance. This guide covers Ekip Connect trip unit compatibility, supported communication protocols (Modbus RTU, PROFIBUS, IEC 61850, and others), measurement accuracy specifications, cybersecurity considerations, and proven field integration patterns.

Published: 2026-04-27 | Last updated: 2026-04-27 | By Stoklink Engineering Team

What is Ekip Connect and why does it matter?

Ekip Connect is, in plain terms, the laptop-side software that talks to the ABB Emax 2 trip unit. ABB ships it free. You install it on Windows, plug a USB cable into the front of the trip unit (or pair via Bluetooth using the Ekip Bluetooth dongle), and you have full read/write access to settings, measurements, event logs, and firmware.

In our experience, this matters more than spec sheets suggest. A breaker that can be configured in 90 seconds at the workbench — before it ever sees a busbar — saves hours during commissioning. We have walked into projects where a contractor was about to energize twelve ABB 1SDA070741R1 E1.2B 800 Ekip Dip LI breakers with factory-default LI curves. Ekip Connect let us push the coordinated curves from a single CSV import in under twenty minutes.

Three deployment scopes

Engineers often confuse three distinct uses of Ekip Connect. They are not interchangeable.

The first is local commissioning — a single breaker, USB cable, technician sitting in front of the panel. The second is panel-level supervision, where Ekip Connect runs on a workstation polling a chain of breakers through an Ekip Com Hub. The third is enterprise integration, where the breakers feed a DCS, SCADA, or building management system through a fieldbus, and Ekip Connect is used only for periodic deep-dive diagnostics.

For complete technical specifications, ordering codes, and accessory configurations of the ABB Emax 2 air circuit breaker family, refer to ABB's official SACE Emax 2 product documentation.

Which trip units support which features?

Not all Ekip trip units offered for the ABB Emax 2 platform are equal, and procurement teams routinely overspecify or underspecify. Here is the breakdown that actually matters in the field.

The Ekip Dip is the entry-level electromechanical-style trip unit with DIP switches. It supports LI, LSI, or LSIG protection and offers basic communication via the front test port — read-only diagnostics, basically. The breakers in the ABB 1SDA070701R1 E1.2B 630 Ekip Dip LI family fall into this category. Cheap, robust, fine for a pump panel where nobody will ever touch the SCADA.

The Ekip Touch and Hi-Touch are the workhorses. Color display, full LSIG plus directional, voltage, energy, and harmonic protection, and — critically — modular communication slots that accept the Ekip Com modules.

The Ekip G Touch and G Hi-Touch add ground-fault and earth leakage with measurement accuracy meeting IEC 60947-2 Annex B. For data centers running TN-S grounding with strict ground current monitoring, this is the only sensible choice.

Communication protocols: which one for which job?

This is where most ABB Emax 2 projects get into trouble. The protocol decision is locked in by the BMS or DCS already on site, but the breaker spec often ignores that. We have seen ABB 1SDA070781R1 E1.2B 1000 Ekip Dip units arrive on a Profinet-only project, and the result was a $14,000 retrofit to add Touch units with Ekip Com Profinet modules.

Modbus RTU and Modbus TCP

Modbus is the universal default. RTU runs on RS-485 at up to 187.5 kbps; TCP runs over standard Ethernet. The Ekip Com Modbus RTU module (ordering code 1SDA074144R1) and the Ekip Com Modbus TCP module are the most common we ship. For a typical industrial MDB with eight to sixteen breakers, daisy-chained Modbus RTU on a single twisted pair is rugged, cheap, and well-supported by every SCADA on the market.

The register map ABB publishes for Emax 2 covers around 600 points: instantaneous currents per phase, neutral current, three line voltages, three phase voltages, active and reactive power per phase and total, energy counters, THD voltage and current, breaker status (open/closed/tripped/spring charged), last trip cause, and over 50 protection setting registers.

Profibus DP

Still alive in process industries — refineries, chemical plants, older Siemens-dominated sites. The Ekip Com Profibus module supports DP-V0 and DP-V1 at up to 12 Mbps. In our experience, Profibus is being phased out everywhere except brownfield expansions. Specify it only when the existing PLC is a Siemens S7-400 with a CP 443-5 card and migration is not budgeted.

Profinet and EtherNet/IP

For new industrial automation, Profinet (Siemens-aligned) and EtherNet/IP (Rockwell-aligned) dominate. Both run on standard Ethernet hardware. The Ekip Com Profinet module is conformance class B, supports MRP ring redundancy, and exchanges data with cycle times down to 8 ms. EtherNet/IP via the Ekip Com EtherNet/IP module presents the breaker as a CIP device with assembly objects.

IEC 61850

For utility substations and critical power infrastructure, IEC 61850 is the standard. The Ekip Com IEC 61850 module supports MMS (client-server) and GOOSE (peer-to-peer messaging for fast trip transfer between IEDs). We have used GOOSE messaging between two ABB 1SDA071021R1 E2.2B 2000 tie breakers to implement a fast bus-tie transfer with under 12 ms total dead time, comfortably inside the IEEE 1547 anti-islanding window.

How accurate are the measurements, really?

Procurement teams sometimes treat the accuracy figures published for ABB Emax 2 trip units as marketing. They are not. The Ekip Touch and Hi-Touch trip units use Rogowski coils for current sensing and direct voltage measurement through the trip unit terminals, with class 1 accuracy per IEC 61557-12.

Specifically: current measurement is ±1% from 0.2 In to 1.2 In, voltage is ±0.5% from 0.85 Un to 1.15 Un, active power and energy are class 1 per IEC 61557-12, and frequency is ±0.1 Hz. That is good enough to replace a discrete Class 1 multifunction meter on most LV switchboards.

In practice, we typically see customers with a ABB 1SDA070861R1 E1.2B 1600 Ekip Dip LI on a feeder, then realize the Dip variant does not provide the metering they need, and end up adding a separate revenue-grade meter. Specifying the Touch variant from day one saves the metering CT, the wiring, and the panel space.

Harmonics and waveform capture

The Ekip Hi-Touch captures harmonics up to the 50th order and provides on-demand waveform capture at 6.4 kHz sampling. We used this on a printing plant where a 1250A E1.2 breaker was nuisance-tripping. The waveform capture downloaded via Ekip Connect showed a 7th-harmonic content of 18% during press start-up — well outside IEEE 519-2014 limits — caused by an aging VSD's input rectifier. The fix was a 5% input line reactor, not a breaker swap. Without the harmonic capture, we would have replaced the breaker and chased the same problem six months later. For a deeper look at this category of failure, see our piece on Emax 2 nuisance tripping root causes.

Cybersecurity: an underspecified topic

Engineers often overlook cybersecurity on ABB Emax 2 deployments until an IT auditor asks pointed questions. Ekip Connect and the communication modules support several security features, but they are not enabled by default.

The Ekip Touch supports user roles with password protection — Operator, Maintenance, Engineer, and Administrator levels per the IEC 62443-3-3 SR 1.1 access control requirement. Modbus TCP communication can be restricted to specific IP addresses through the module configuration. The IEC 61850 module supports certificate-based authentication and encrypted MMS sessions per IEC 62351.

A common mistake is leaving the default factory password (0001) in production. We have audited sites where every breaker on a 480 V switchboard had factory defaults. Anyone with an Ekip T&P cable could have changed protection settings and walked away.

Integration patterns: what works in the field

Pattern A: Standalone metering

A single ABB Emax 2 breaker fitted with an Ekip Touch and no communication module, used for local display only. Common for back-up generators or small distribution. Setup time: under 30 minutes per breaker. Cost: zero beyond the trip unit.

Pattern B: Daisy-chained Modbus RTU to a gateway

Eight to thirty-two breakers on RS-485, terminated into an Ekip Com Hub or a third-party Modbus-to-Ethernet gateway, then into the BMS over Modbus TCP. The Ekip Com Hub is a 10-port aggregator that simplifies topology and provides a single Ethernet uplink. This is the pattern we deploy most often in commercial buildings and water treatment plants. The Ekip Com Hub also supports cloud connectivity via ABB Ability for fleet-level analytics.

Pattern C: Native fieldbus to PLC/DCS

Each breaker has its own Profinet or EtherNet/IP module, sitting on the plant's automation network. Used in process industries where the breaker status must be in the same scan cycle as motor starters and sensors. More expensive — roughly $400–600 per module — but unavoidable when sub-50 ms response is required.

Pattern D: IEC 61850 substation integration

For utility-grade installations, including industrial cogeneration tie-ins. The breaker becomes an IED participating in GOOSE-based interlocking and protection schemes. We have implemented this with ABB 1SDA070981R1 E2.2B 1600 Ekip Dip units retrofitted to Touch trip units for a hospital cogen project — though in retrospect, specifying Touch from the start would have saved roughly $8,500 in retrofit labor.

Real-world example: data center MDB retrofit

A 6 MW colocation data center in Frankfurt asked us to upgrade visibility on twelve existing ABB Emax 2 breakers in their main distribution boards. The breakers were a mix of E2.2 and E4.2 frames with Ekip Touch units, but no communication modules. The customer's BMS was Siemens Desigo, speaking BACnet/IP.

The chosen path: install Ekip Com Modbus TCP modules in each trip unit, add a single Ekip Com Hub per MDB, then place a Modbus-to-BACnet gateway between the Hub and the BMS. Cost per breaker: about €380 in hardware plus 1.5 hours of labor. Total project came in under €18,000 versus a €95,000 quote we received from the original switchgear vendor for a "smart panel upgrade."

The data center now sees per-breaker active power, energy, and trip events in their BMS and has correlated three near-miss overload events with chiller plant transitions — none of which would have been visible before. For more on this application class, see our piece on Emax 2 in data center MDBs.

Polling cycle calculator

Common configuration mistakes

After hundreds of ABB Emax 2 commissioning projects, the same five mistakes keep showing up.

First, mismatched baud rates between the master and the breakers. The Ekip Com module ships at 19200 bps, but the SCADA technician sometimes sets 9600 on the gateway. The bus seems dead. Easy fix, but loses an afternoon.

Second, missing terminating resistors on RS-485. The standard is 120 Ω at each end of the bus. We have seen production sites running for years with reflections corrupting 5–10% of frames, where the operator just accepts the polling errors as "communication noise."

Third, leaving protection settings in factory default after enabling communication. The breaker reports beautifully but trips on inrush because the L pickup is at 1.0 In with no thermal memory adjustment. Configure the curve before you energize.

Fourth, IP address conflicts on Modbus TCP modules. Each module ships with the same factory IP (192.168.0.254). If you plug in two without changing one first, you get an ARP storm. Set IPs one at a time using a direct cable connection.

Fifth, forgetting to back up the configuration. Ekip Connect can export the full configuration to an XML file. Do this after commissioning and store it with the project documentation. We have replaced trip units in the field where the original config was lost — recreating settings from a printed report cost a full day of engineering time per breaker.

Firmware management and lifecycle

Ekip trip units on the ABB Emax 2 run firmware that ABB updates roughly twice a year. New releases typically add protocol enhancements, fix communication edge cases, and occasionally add new protection features (the dual-setting function on Ekip Touch was firmware-delivered to existing units, for example).

Firmware is pushed through Ekip Connect over the front USB port. The process takes about three minutes per trip unit and requires the breaker to be racked out or in test position — the firmware update inhibits the trip function during the upload. We have learned the hard way to schedule firmware updates during planned outages, never on a live feeder.

A subtle point: firmware updates can change the Modbus register map. ABB maintains backward compatibility, but new registers appear, and occasionally the published map version changes. Before a fleet-wide update, validate one breaker against the SCADA, then proceed.

Asset lifecycle through Ekip Connect

The Ekip Connect "asset" view shows total operations count, last maintenance date, contact wear estimate, and trip history per breaker. For a fleet of fifty ABB 1SDA070782R1 E1.2B 1000 Ekip Dip LSI breakers across a manufacturing campus, this turns maintenance from a calendar exercise into a condition-based one. The contact wear estimate is computed from the integrated I²t of every operation, not just the count — a more honest indicator of remaining life.

Sizing communication infrastructure: practical guidance

Procurement teams often forget that the communication side has its own bill of materials. For a typical 16-breaker MDB integrating into a BMS, expect the following:

One Ekip Com module per breaker (Modbus RTU is cheapest, around $180 list; Profinet runs $480; IEC 61850 modules approach $900). One Ekip Com Hub per panel if you want fleet management or cloud connectivity. RS-485 cabling — Belden 3105A or equivalent twisted shielded pair, with 120 Ω terminating resistors at both ends. One Modbus-to-BACnet or Modbus-to-OPC UA gateway if the BMS speaks anything other than Modbus.

For larger projects, factor in network engineering: VLAN segregation between the OT network (breakers, PLCs) and the IT network (BMS workstations, email), per ISA/IEC 62443-3-2 zone-and-conduit principles. We typically see this overlooked on smaller industrial sites and then forced as a retrofit after the first IT audit.

For more on how communication choices interact with sizing, see our step-by-step Emax 2 sizing calculator, and for a feature-by-feature overview of the platform, our introduction to the ABB SACE Emax 2.

How does Ekip Connect compare to competitors?

Some procurement teams ask whether ABB's digital ecosystem is genuinely better than Schneider's EcoStruxure Power or Siemens' Powermanager. The honest answer: it depends on what you already have.

If your existing fleet is mostly ABB, Ekip Connect is the no-brainer choice — it integrates natively with ABB Ability and shares user accounts across the platform. If you are evaluating ABB versus Schneider on a greenfield, the protocols are nearly identical, and the differentiator is usually the local service partner. We cover this in detail in our comparison of Emax 2 vs Schneider MasterPact MTZ.

One genuine ABB advantage: Ekip Connect software is free and feature-complete. Schneider's equivalent (EcoStruxure Power Commission) is also free, but the deeper analytics modules — fleet management, predictive maintenance — are subscription-based on the Schneider side. ABB Ability has a similar tiered model, but the entry-level dashboard is included with the Ekip Com Hub at no recurring cost.

Browse related products and categories

For projects in the planning stage, browse the full air circuit breakers collection at Stoklink, including Emax 2 and Emax X1. For complementary protection devices on the same panel, see our miniature circuit breaker, residual current device, and relay categories.

Related Reading

• ABB Emax 2 Full Technical Specifications: Current Ratings, Breaking Capacity and Dimensions
• ABB Emax 2 in Data Centers: MDB Design, Redundancy and Uptime Considerations
• ABB Emax 2 Nuisance Tripping: Root Causes, Diagnostic Steps and Fixes
• ABB Emax 2 vs Schneider MasterPact MTZ: Technical Specs, Features and Price Compared

Conclusion

The Ekip Connect ecosystem is what turns the Emax 2 from a circuit breaker into a measurement and protection node in a modern industrial network. The hardware is mature, the protocols cover every major industrial network from legacy Profibus to IEC 61850, and the free software removes friction at the commissioning bench. What separates a successful integration from a stranded one is the upfront decision: specify Touch or Hi-Touch trip units, pick the right communication module for the existing automation backbone, and document the configuration after every commissioning.

The mistakes we see most often are upstream of any technical issue — they are procurement specifications that omitted the Touch upgrade, or commissioning teams that skipped the configuration export. Both are inexpensive to fix at the start and expensive to remediate later.

For the full selection methodology, sizing approach, and maintenance practices, see our complete ABB SACE Emax 2 selection, application and maintenance guide. The digital features of Emax 2 are powerful, but they only deliver value when integrated thoughtfully into the broader switchgear and automation strategy.