Beyond the Blue Box

Lifetime support, supply chain security, training, and education—the benefits that back our products and solutions.

When you buy from SEL, you get our commitment to designing and manufacturing the highest quality products, the value of our ten-year warranty and lifetime support, and our dedication to empowering our customers with the educational tools they need to maximize their investment. It’s more than just a product—it’s SEL.

Service and Support

SEL backs our products and commitments with a ten-year warranty, no-charge diagnostic and repair services, local support, and a variety of test procedures and certifications.

It’s been this way at SEL for nearly 40 years and counting—a major reason why we’re North America’s most trusted provider of protective relays and ranked #1 in price, service, and support by international utilities.

SEL devices are designed for a working life of at least 20 years, and every SEL-manufactured device comes with a ten-year warranty—the best in the electric power industry. If it fails under warranty, repair and replacement are free.

We always do all that we can to repair any returned product, whether it meets our warranty or not.

Should a product failure occur, we encourage our customers to return the product. Our goal is a 72-hour turnaround to get to the root cause of the issue and either repair or replace the unit. When something goes wrong with a product, we want it back—this helps us better understand what our products must endure in the field and informs the ongoing improvements we make to our technologies and designs.

SEL Warranty and Support

All SEL products are guaranteed for ten years. We also provide free technical support as long as your SEL product remains in service.

Engineering Services

From power management services and microgrid control to automation and cybersecurity, let our Engineering Services group partner with you to create a solution that meets your needs.

Quality in Manufacturing

We design and manufacture all our electronic devices in the U.S.A. This allows for direct collaboration and short feedback loops between our Research and Development and Manufacturing divisions, as well as increased supply chain security.

SEL products are designed and manufactured for the world’s most challenging environments, exceeding all industry standards for temperature, shock, and electric stress. Many of our products are designed to withstand extreme operating temperatures of –40° to +85°C (–40° to +185°F).

An optional conformal coating for circuit boards adds an extra level of protection against contaminants in extreme environments. 

Our products have a mean time between returns for repair (MTBR) of more than 350 years, based on observed field performance. This means that if you have 350 SEL products installed in your systems, you can expect to have less than one unscheduled removal from service per year for reason, whether it’s a defect or an external factor such as overvoltage, overcurrent, wildlife damage, or environmental exposure.

*This MTBR metric was calculated in June 2023.

Secure Supply Chain Management

Learn more about our five-part approach to secure supply chain management.

Quality Philosophy

Informed by the principles of world-class manufacturing, we integrate simplicity and innovation into our every process.

Cybersecurity Best Practices

We have a long history of solution and product design for operational technology (OT) environments. This has allowed us to build a deep understanding of the security considerations specific to OT networks, such as assumed trust between devices, deviation from baseline status, and how the concepts of confidentiality, integrity, and availability should relate to each other based on the application.

We build layers of defense and maintain the integrity of each layer’s purpose—in other words, we apply the right technology at the right layer. We believe simpler products are easier to defend and that the safety of the power system and availability of the protection and control devices come first.

SEL solutions incorporate layered cyber defenses to help keep your system secure. 

These defenses incorporate security features that support the specific purpose of each part of the system, such as:

  • OT software-defined networking (SDN).
  • Role-based access controls.
  • Integration with multifactor authentication systems and one-time-password solutions.
  • Encrypted external communications via VPN with IPsec.
  • Hardened engineering access and HMI systems.
Cybersecurity Solutions

We simplify cybersecurity with layered defenses that apply the right technologies in each layer.

Engineering Services—Cybersecurity

Our cybersecurity professionals provide secure solutions tailored to your priorities and objectives.

Training and Education

A partnership with SEL doesn’t end at commissioning. We’re dedicated to continuous teaching and training opportunities, including education courses through SEL University, advanced documentation like technical papers and application notes, and webinars and conferences.

SEL University (SELU) courses and many of our seminars provide professional development hours (PDHs) for maintaining Professional Engineering (PE) licenses. Courses and seminars can be delivered in various formats, including self-paced online learning, virtual classrooms, live and recorded webinars, and in person.

We can also work with you to develop training that is customized to the specific needs of your workforce.


View current SELU course offerings

SEL University covers topics such as:

  • Introduction to SEL relays
  • Cybersecurity and securing OT networks
  • SEL Real-Time Automation Controller (RTAC) applications and configuring a communications scheme
  • Protecting power systems for engineers