AFCI and GFCI troubleshooting tools and guidelines

[Little Bill]

Although this thread is over a year old, and usually would be closed, I am leaving it open as the info is still pertinent.

 

[kwired]

For anyone who may find this helpful...

I have a residential customer who has a pair of Siemens panels that were installed in 2012. Over the last few years we have gone out there several times to troubleshoot tripping arc fault breakers. Our easiest first step was to replace the breaker with a new one, it would hold, we would tell them "let us know if it continues to be an issue and we'll come back and dig deeper." No issues for months. Then there's a problem with a DIFFERENT circuit. Same procedure, swap it out, it holds, walk away. Then yet another circuit, and so on and so on. We felt that it might be logical because we have been installing newer generations of breakers that are likely less susceptible to improper nuisance tripping. None of the replaced breakers ever had issues again.

Well over the last year it has been getting progressively more frequent. And finally it got to the point that the new breakers were continuing to trip after being replaced. There are 63 circuits in the house and 21 AFCI many of which had been problematic over the years. I wasn't sure where to begin.

Well I called Siemens to discuss what appeared originally to be a bunch of failed breakers but now was something else. Mike (from Siemens) sent me a bunch of documentation and recommended I try to get a hold of an Intelli-Arc tool then call him back when I was on site. Well we called him when we were on site and with the Intelli-Arc were immediately able to tell that there was some sort of "noise" that was registering as arching and propagating through the entire system. Very quickly we were able to determine that there were a bunch of TRENDnet ethernet over powerline adapters on multiple circuits causing the majority of the problems.

I know some people on here have rolled their eyes at the Intelli-Arc but after using one today for the first time, I'm a believer. I know I would have been pulling my already thinning hair out with how systemic the problem seemed to be and how intermittent the tripping was.

Credit where credit is due; Mike at Siemens was very knowledgeable, patient and informative. The Intelli-Arc is very useful for "noise" induced problems over multiple circuits.

(For the record, we almost exclusively install Square D. Although this sounds like a paid advertisement for Siemens, it's not. )

- Rob



Here are a bunch of links and documents that are very helpful as references:

https://forums.mikeholt.com/threads/afci-testing-diagnostic-tools.129943/

https://forums.mikeholt.com/threads/zwave-and-afci-tripping-issues.2551392/#post-2553931

https://www.eldoled.com/cms_file.php?fromDB=8935&forceDownload

https://www.downloads.siemens.com/d...aspx?pos=download&fct=getasset&id1=BTLV_40705

https://www.afcisafety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Troubleshooting-with-AFCI.pdf

https://www.eaton.com/ecm/groups/public/@pub/@electrical/documents/content/ct_206788.pdf

http://thecircuitdetective.com/afci_circuit_breakers.php

https://media.distributordatasolutions.com/schneider/2018q1/3e01143b5f3cfdfe3d2fd6ffb5d7f7081b14dfa7

Only good thing about this is you did figure out what the cause was, but sounds like it was something that isn't really malfunctioning either. We as contractors/installers have been eating cost on this crap for too long. I don't care if they give you replacement breakers at no cost, you still replacing them and doing other investigating on your own time in most instances.

 

[marmathsen]

Only good thing about this is you did figure out what the cause was, but sounds like it was something that isn't really malfunctioning either. We as contractors/installers have been eating cost on this crap for too long. I don't care if they give you replacement breakers at no cost, you still replacing them and doing other investigating on your own time in most instances.

Sadly true! Although the devices might be exceeding the conducted emissions of FCC Part 15, Class B. Even if they are though, does that pose a safety risk that justified a tripping breaker? Or is that just noise that "confuses" the AFCI breaker. It sounds like the latter. Regardless of who's at fault...it definitely ain't me.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

 

[kwired]

Sadly true! Although the devices might be exceeding the conducted emissions of FCC Part 15, Class B. Even if they are though, does that pose a safety risk that justified a tripping breaker? Or is that just noise that "confuses" the AFCI breaker. It sounds like the latter. Regardless of who's at fault...it definitely ain't me.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

Unless it is interfering with air traffic control, police/emergency services communications, or similar situations likely nobody does anything about it.