or may be implemented in various combinations of hardware and software furthermore for use in a modular architecture of an elmc the sspc unit 300 a may be grouped with sspcs for a plurality of loads on a single card of a load management module furthermore additional elements may be included with the physical implementation of the sspc unit 300 a illustrated in fig2 and or certain elements may be removed 0019 fig3 illustrates an alternative embodiment for power switching and arc fault protection in accordance with principles of the present invention in the alternative embodiment illustrated in fig3 an sspc unit 300 b comprises the power switching device 310 and a switching control and protection device 320 b as compared to the switching control and protection device 320 a for the embodiment of the present invention shown in fig2 the switching control and protection device 320 b shown in fig3 does not include an arc fault protection unit i e there is no one to one correspondence between sspc unit and arc fault detector instead a dedicated arc fault protection unit 160 connected to the data bus 150 via an input 161 monitors the total load current supplied to a plurality of load channels 1 to n more specifically the dedicated arc fault protection unit 160 measures the total load current passed to the plurality of channels.