JDH80
Member
- Location
- State College, PA
Hey guys...super long time lurker here, purchaser of Mike's material to use in my educational programs that we run at the University, and I'd argue a fairly arguable guy from an electrical perspective (B.S. in Electrical Engineering, went through IBEW apprenticeship, and have about 20 years experience working on power systems at fairly high levels (MV protection, NETA device testing, construction...etc).
ANYWAYS. I had something happen last night at my house that I cannot explain. I built a new house around 2 years ago...had an electrical contractor do all the interior wiring, less a few items (added 100 amp subpanel, installed main service from the meter to the street, outbuilding). At any rate, I haven't had one issue and I am super meticulous (as well is the local code office) so I am fairly (99.9%) certain everything is correct.
Last night I feel asleep on the couch watching the baseball game...at about 2 am I wake up and go to put, plug my phone into charge(its at 1%) and about 10 minutes later I hear the phone beep (like it came off the charger) and I notice the alarm clock is off.
So I getup and notice that some circuits in the house have power and others do not. I go down to the panel and noted that EVERY AFCI was tripped! I reset them and no more issues. I also got on the interwebs to check the electric company's outage website and I notice right down the road there was an outage affecting 15 people. I couldn't sleep!!
I do have a whole house surge protector on my main panel in the top right position...it's fine (green light on). My theory is that there was some kind of transient from the utility (and perhaps the MOV (surge protector) closed) caused this to occur? I understand very well how AFCI, GFCI, and all protective devices work including relays for MV protection, heck I even now how to perform power system studies...this situation at my house has me baffled.
Any ideas?!!?!
ANYWAYS. I had something happen last night at my house that I cannot explain. I built a new house around 2 years ago...had an electrical contractor do all the interior wiring, less a few items (added 100 amp subpanel, installed main service from the meter to the street, outbuilding). At any rate, I haven't had one issue and I am super meticulous (as well is the local code office) so I am fairly (99.9%) certain everything is correct.
Last night I feel asleep on the couch watching the baseball game...at about 2 am I wake up and go to put, plug my phone into charge(its at 1%) and about 10 minutes later I hear the phone beep (like it came off the charger) and I notice the alarm clock is off.
So I getup and notice that some circuits in the house have power and others do not. I go down to the panel and noted that EVERY AFCI was tripped! I reset them and no more issues. I also got on the interwebs to check the electric company's outage website and I notice right down the road there was an outage affecting 15 people. I couldn't sleep!!
I do have a whole house surge protector on my main panel in the top right position...it's fine (green light on). My theory is that there was some kind of transient from the utility (and perhaps the MOV (surge protector) closed) caused this to occur? I understand very well how AFCI, GFCI, and all protective devices work including relays for MV protection, heck I even now how to perform power system studies...this situation at my house has me baffled.
Any ideas?!!?!