Mitsubishi VFD Tripping gfci receptacles on different circuit

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Kenshaffer87

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Ohio
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Service electrician
So I installed a couple “big ass fan” style fans today and they come with a control box with a Mitsubishi VFD, pulled a 208v 3 phase feed for both fans and powered them on. As soon as the fans starts, several gfci outlets trip (not every time, but probably 3 out of 5 times) outlets are fed out of the same panel but different pipe and circuits. Anyone ever seen this type of an issue? Or have any ideas on resolving it?
 
Do the GFCI outlets that tripped have loads plugged into them? Just trying to get the the "big picture" of the situation.
Have you tried to contact the manufacturer about this?
 
Do the GFCI outlets that tripped have loads plugged into them? Just trying to get the the "big picture" of the situation.
Have you tried to contact the manufacturer about this?
Yes they did, nothing crazy, some computers, monitors, and a couple fluorescent work lights.
Have not contacted anyone yet, I wanted to try to wrap my head around what’s going on...(not much progress on that yet, haha)
 
Look into “common mode noise”. What kind of wiring method is run from the drive to the motors, and how long is it? Is the grounding done correctly? Does the EGC going to the motor land directly on the drive?
 
Look into “common mode noise”. What kind of wiring method is run from the drive to the motors, and how long is it? Is the grounding done correctly? Does the EGC going to the motor land directly on the drive?
Emt from the drives to the motors with feeds for both motors in the same pipe, 1 equipment ground in the pipe that lands on both drives, first motor is approximately 40’ second is approximately 80’
 
Emt from the drives to the motors with feeds for both motors in the same pipe, 1 equipment ground in the pipe that lands on both drives, first motor is approximately 40’ second is approximately 80’

Frankly, this is not a great scenario. Whenever you are dealing with VFD outputs, put each circuit in it’s own raceway. You’re going to have a lot of capacitive coupling with the THHN, which will heat the EMT and require additional amperage. At a bare minimum, I would pull an additional EGC so that each motor is connected directly to their respective drives.

Is your wire type EGC bonded to the EMT at the drive end? Is the EMT bonded at the drive end? Are the drives in an enclosure, if so; is it metallic or nonmetallic?
 
Frankly, this is not a great scenario. Whenever you are dealing with VFD outputs, put each circuit in it’s own raceway. You’re going to have a lot of capacitive coupling with the THHN, which will heat the EMT and require additional amperage. At a bare minimum, I would pull an additional EGC so that each motor is connected directly to their respective drives.

Is your wire type EGC bonded to the EMT at the drive end? Is the EMT bonded at the drive end? Are the drives in an enclosure, if so; is it metallic or nonmetallic?
Ok, good information, thank you.
The enclosure is metal and yes the EGC is bonded to the enclosure (so to the pipe too, through the emt connector.)
So, is it possible for this noise to trip a gfci on another circuit?
 
Ok, good information, thank you.
The enclosure is metal and yes the EGC is bonded to the enclosure (so to the pipe too, through the emt connector.)
So, is it possible for this noise to trip a gfci on another circuit?
It is very possible for that to happen and it can be either noise on the conductors or RF through the air.
That second one was why I asked about the wiring method, but steel conduit is a pretty good shield to help prevent that issue.
 
So, is it possible for this noise to trip a gfci on another circuit?

My take on this is that noise currents from the VFD's are producing noise voltages on the panel buses for each of the three phases. As a result the noise voltage will be proportional to the impedance presented at each bus. And this impedance is likely be higher at the frequencies significantly above 60 Hz where VFD generated noise is present.
However, there will likely be relatively little noise on the neutral bar because it is not connected to the VFD's. And so a noisy line voltage and a quiet neutral will be fed to the GFCI receptacles. Hence the line and neutral pair of conductors will have both a differential component and a common mode component of noise, such that these noise components effectively add on the line conductor and subtract out on the neutral. The bottom line of this is that there will be a common mode noise component that is fed to to GFCI receptacles.

The question is whether a GFCI receptacle will be false triggered by this noise voltage without a load being present, or if some load impedance is needed to produce a noise current that will be sensed by the internal toroid and cause it to trigger. This is why I asked above whether there were loads on the GFCI receptacles.
Hence it might be useful to see whether the GFCI receptacle will trip without any load. If it doesn't trip when there is no load, then a 2-wire load like a heater could be plugged in which would present a very high impedance to a common-mode noise voltage present on the 2 wires. If it still doesn't trip then that would indicate that a common-mode impedance to the EGC is needed (for example, from a capacitor) in order for a common-mode noise current to flow and then trip the GFCI.

As far as mitigating measures, ferrite cores could be put around the L-N pairs to see if they might reduce common-mode noise sufficently to prevent the tripping.
 
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My take on this is that noise currents from the VFD's are producing noise voltages on the panel buses for each of the three phases. As a result the noise voltage will be proportional to the impedance presented at each bus. And this impedance is likely be higher at the frequencies significantly above 60 Hz where VFD generated noise is present.
However, there will likely be relatively little noise on the neutral bar because it is not connected to the VFD's. And so a noisy line voltage and a quiet neutral will be fed to the GFCI receptacles. Hence the line and neutral pair of conductors will have both a differential component and a common mode component of noise, such that these noise components effectively add on the line conductor and subtract out on the neutral. The bottom line of this is that there will be a common mode noise component that is fed to to GFCI receptacles.

The question is whether a GFCI receptacle will be false triggered by this noise voltage without a load being present, or if some load impedance is needed to produce a noise current that will be sensed by the internal toroid and cause it to trigger. This is why I asked above whether there were loads on the GFCI receptacles.
Hence it might be useful to see whether the GFCI receptacle will trip without any load. If it doesn't trip when there is no load, then a 2-wire load like a heater could be plugged in which would present a very high impedance to a common-mode noise voltage present on the 2 wires. If it still doesn't trip then that would indicate that a common-mode impedance to the EGC is needed (for example, from a capacitor) in order for a common-mode noise current to flow and then trip the GFCI.

As far as mitigating measures, ferrite cores could be put around the L-N pairs to see if they might reduce common-mode noise sufficently to prevent the tripping.
Thanks guys! I’ll dig into this a some more tomorrow!
 
My take on this is that noise currents from the VFD's are producing noise voltages on the panel buses for each of the three phases. As a result the noise voltage will be proportional to the impedance presented at each bus. And this impedance is likely be higher at the frequencies significantly above 60 Hz where VFD generated noise is present.
However, there will likely be relatively little noise on the neutral bar because it is not connected to the VFD's. And so a noisy line voltage and a quiet neutral will be fed to the GFCI receptacles. Hence the line and neutral pair of conductors will have both a differential component and a common mode component of noise, such that these noise components effectively add on the line conductor and subtract out on the neutral. The bottom line of this is that there will be a common mode noise component that is fed to to GFCI receptacles.

The question is whether a GFCI receptacle will be false triggered by this noise voltage without a load being present, or if some load impedance is needed to produce a noise current that will be sensed by the internal toroid and cause it to trigger. This is why I asked above whether there were loads on the GFCI receptacles.
Hence it might be useful to see whether the GFCI receptacle will trip without any load. If it doesn't trip when there is no load, then a 2-wire load like a heater could be plugged in which would present a very high impedance to a common-mode noise voltage present on the 2 wires. If it still doesn't trip then that would indicate that a common-mode impedance to the EGC is needed (for example, from a capacitor) in order for a common-mode noise current to flow and then trip the GFCI.

As far as mitigating measures, ferrite cores could be put around the L-N pairs to see if they might reduce common-mode noise sufficently to prevent the tripping.

I agree. While the grounding and wiring to the motors isn’t optimal, it sounds like it should be adequate to bring noise current back to the drive.

A line reactor could also help.
 
Common mode noise has already been mentioned.

3 phase triplet harmonics are all in phase so will couple magnetically as well as by capacitance to EMT . The high frequency currents will follow and divide overall among all impedance paths thru grounds and wires.

Add to that the high frequency switching of VFD -- Have had to add 5 to 15 uH inductors on the green wires in VFD and other high frequency drives to prevent GFCI trips.
 
I agree. While the grounding and wiring to the motors isn’t optimal, it sounds like it should be adequate to bring noise current back to the drive.

A line reactor could also help.
Got back to this job today. I ended up installing a small line reactor for each drive, and my issues with the GFCIs tripping went away. Thanks for the help!
 
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