Noise on other circuits causes arc fault to trip

[VirutalElectrician]

Running into a strange one....

House has a Leviton panel and breakers....

Running a noisey load on one circuit is causing an AF trip on another circuit. It's always the same circuit tripping.

ie, running a vacuum, chop saw, etc, on a circuit with just receptacles, is causing the circuit with just lights to AF trip.

I have replaced the breaker 3 times.

I contacted Leviton and they swear it's a crossed neutral as their AF breakers require a 4-5amp differential to trip.

So I tested a 13 amp resistive load on one of the receptacle circuits that was causing the AF trip, let it run for 30 minutes, no trip. Turn on the chop saw, AF trip.

The kicker was last weekend they tripped a breaker in their shop, which is fed from a seperate feed off the meter, and the AF lighting circuit tripped.

So a short circuit off of a completely different panel fed from the same meter, caused this one specific circuit and this one specific AF breaker to trip.

The one circuit that keeps AF tripping is entirely lights. Although it does have 10 interconnected smoke detectors on it.

Anyone else seen such a weird thing?

 

[tortuga]

Running into a strange one....



Anyone else seen such a weird thing?

Yes, not with Leviton in particular, but what I do is replace the AFCI breaker with a 30mA GFPE breaker a quick google search shows Leviton offers them:

15A 1-Pole GFPE Hydraulic Circuit Breaker | LB115-EP | Leviton

15A 1-Pole GFPE Branch Circuit Breaker with Hydraulic Magnetic Trip Technology and Plug-On Installation. 120V

leviton.com

Leave the GFPE in until it trips, or a month.
If that does trip you have a wiring issue / appliance issue / ground fault.
If it never trips it was a AFCI ghost.

(I have not seen many Leviton panels in my area but the issue is the same)

 

[AC\DC]

I’ve ran into that with those levington those garbage breakers