Mystery

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czars

Czars
Location
West Melbourne, FL
Occupation
Florida Certified Electrical Contractor
I had a call today from the caretaker of a manufactured home in a retirement community. Apparently POCO had a problem that affected over 90 homes in the community. In this case, the main 150A breaker in the service panel had tripped while there was a minimal load on in the house (refer, clocks and 1 light). The 150A breaker in the meter pedestal had also tripped. I can not envision what could have caused the breakers to trip. Does anyone have an idea about what caused the breakers to trip??
 

sameguy

Senior Member
Location
New York
Occupation
Master Elec./JW retired
The problem that the poco had?
Call them find out if all is good, go test, turn back on.
Could they have had a xformer blow?
 

fireryan

Senior Member
Location
Minnesota
I had a call today from the caretaker of a manufactured home in a retirement community. Apparently POCO had a problem that affected over 90 homes in the community. In this case, the main 150A breaker in the service panel had tripped while there was a minimal load on in the house (refer, clocks and 1 light). The 150A breaker in the meter pedestal had also tripped. I can not envision what could have caused the breakers to trip. Does anyone have an idea about what caused the breakers to trip??

Do all the appliances still work? If they had a surge or dropped a neutral it would take out most of the appliances and electronics in the house which could cause breakers to trip. I would call the poco and see what the issue was. I cant believe they didnt notify the owners anyways
 

kwired

Electron manager
Location
NE Nebraska
There wasn't by chance a fault somewhere and the breaker(s) were doing what they are designed to do? Was there any lightning at the time this happened? Were any branch circuit breakers tripped or just the main?

A megohmeter can help eliminate some possibilities.
 

hurk27

Senior Member
I posted awhile back about a time that our POCO had a 69kv line drop down on a 7200 volt line and surged a large area of homes with about 950 volts for over 15 seconds, (had a recorder running) we were flooded with service calls with everything from fires to GFCI, smoke detectors, garage door openers, you name it damaged, the fires were cause from the MOV's in surge strips burning up, but houses that had at least tow or more surge strips each on both legs of the service would trip the main, and most of these received no damage to their electronics, my trailer had both breakers open, but I didn't loose any electronics, but then I have and had at the time many surge control systems in place, five triplet 1600 watt line conditioners/voltage regulators, and TVSS strips all over the trailer, which are now here in my house.

It took the fact of having the paper recorder chart I had running and a few lawyers to make the utility to admit what had happened, oh and this happened twice, about two years later it happened again, the first time was something about an insulator failed that cause the line to drop, the second time it was blamed on lightning and was ruled an act of God.

Trust me the POCO will not be forthright in a case like this.
 

charlietuna

Senior Member
Sounds like the power company somehow grounded out a phase leg or energized the neutral--i have seen this before--now just try to prove it??? We did !
 

LarryFine

Master Electrician Electric Contractor Richmond VA
Location
Henrico County, VA
Occupation
Electrical Contractor
What is a POGO?
Or:

state_possum_photo.gif
 

czars

Czars
Location
West Melbourne, FL
Occupation
Florida Certified Electrical Contractor
We checked with POCO and they admit nothing. No lightning recently. We don't actually know when the three breakers tripped or is they tripped at the same time. Nothing appears to be damaged in the home. Everything works with no apparent damage to anything. I'm still trying to understand a mechanism or event sequence that would result in the 60A electric heater breaker, the service panel 150A breaker and the meter pedestal 150A breaker all being tripped.
 

glene77is

Senior Member
Location
Memphis, TN
I posted awhile back about a time that our POCO had a 69kv line drop down on a 7200 volt line and surged a large area of homes with about 950 volts for over 15 seconds

Hurk,

Your post on MikeHolt's forum was so informative ("Mystery"),
that I sent a copy to my son in D.C., to help conclude his evaluation
of MOV strips vs. ZeroSurge (back-to-back "L" networked inductors)
to protect his computer setup. They have a good diagram on website.

He is having trouble visualizing that a burned MOV strip
was a working "sacrifice" mode.

ZeroSurge costs > 10 times (that is, more than $250),
but purportedly cannot fail, or trip breakers.

I suggested a combination of both.
 
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