- Location
- Chapel Hill, NC
- Occupation
- Retired Electrical Contractor
With the new GE version 1 pole combination AFCIs, contractors can apply qty 2 - 1 poles with a handle tie to meet the shared neutral application. We are the only manufacturer that can apply combination AFCIs in this way. Siemens, CH, and Square D all use a ground CT in their AFCI detection which does not allow them to utilize this configuration.
Basically there is no GFCI protection in these AFCI. The model number is the same but you must look for MOD 3 suffix that is added to the model number to know if it is the correct version. Interesting that the load neutral only need connection on one of the breakers.
Until now, using a shared neutral (multiwire branch circuits) on arc fault protection circuits required the use of 2-pole AFCI breakers, since the AFCI circuitry uses a ground fault CT to help it detect arcs. But with GE’s newly developed combination AFCI technology, no ground fault CT is required, so shared neutral circuits can be used with two 1-pole AFCIs connected together with a handle tie (see Figure 1). The use of shared neutral circuits produces significant copper savings when two branch circuits are close to each other but far from the circuit breaker panel. A shared neutral circuit uses 3-conductor NM-B wire to join two adjacent circuit breakers in the panel to a junction box near the branch circuit loads/outlets (see Figure 2).