Abstract: A power distribution and protection system and method where an electrical power source distributes power to different load circuits and provides protection that changes on the fly as required by sensing the characteristics of the loads. This is accomplished by a central processing node that is connected to multiple point of use nodes. The characteristics over an initial period of time of the current drawn by the loads are detected and compared to references that determine whether a load is inductive, resistive or is in arcing condition. One of the techniques used involves counting the zero crossings over a predetermined period of time. If the voltage applied to the loads is AC, a high pass filter is used to extract the ringing characteristics to be compared.