Adjacent Circuit Trips Arc-Fault

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augie47

augie47

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State Electrical Inspector (Retired)
Just curious if anyone had seen this.
I was at a job site. Bedroom lighting was connected to circuit #1. A carpenter plugged in a quartz work light to a receptacle by the panel on circuit #20 and the arc-fault tripped.
Thought it might be coincidental, but we repeated for the same result.
 
I presume this is a 120/250 volt single phase panel. That means circuits 1 and 20 are on opposite Phases. Hardly "adjacent," I might have said. :roll: Any chance there is a MWBC involved here? If the BR light circuit is on an arc fault breaker, and if the neutral is shared with a circuit that serves receptacles, then perhaps something about the quartz light is being sensed by the AFCI breaker, via the shared neutral.
 
What about other loads plugged into the same circuit? Same result?

I would say CB is right on it though. I have had other types of electric discharge lamps do the same thing but usually they are older fixtures when this occurs. I just assumed it was do to some leakage current causing the GFPE part of the breaker to trip.

I am not sure if a quarzt lamp would fall under this type of lamp because I am not sure how they work.
 
We had a similar problem on a job: Homeowner plugs vacuum into bedroom outlet, breaker trips for other bedroom across the hall. Vacuum continues to run normally. This condition was repeated each time owner cleaned the house.

None of the circuits were MWBC -- all had dedicated 2-wire home runs, etc.

The cure was to replace the offending breaker. Ultra-sensitive it would seem ... ;)
 
neutralandground touching

neutralandground touching

I've had the same situation.... There is "probably" a fault in the circuit that trips. place a load on the circuit that trips.. It hasnt triped yet because there is not a load on it. I'm guessing a screw touching the neutal and the ground.
troubleshoot the old fashion way(it won't unless trip unless ther is a load present-I use a light bulb on a pigtail socket-) Start in the middle and undo joints.
search past threads on more troubleshooting procedures..
 
Strange ... charlieb, agree "adjacent' was probably not best description.."another circuit in the same panel" would be better..; j cole, the receptacle has had limited use , but others loads did not trip; rt.. ran resistance and megger check in AFCI circuit, found no problem.
 
are the neutrals landed on the wright breaker or somehow are they common with each other some how scabbed between the two circuits along the way
 
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