JDB3
Senior Member
- Location
- San Antonio, Texas
Just had a call from a customer. A thunder storm was in their area and caused over half of their breakers to trip. :jawdrop:
Ever hear of this?:?
Ever hear of this?:?
Breaker tripped when
- Thread starter JDB3
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mbrooke
Batteries Included
- Location
- United States
- Occupation
- Technician
What type of breakers are these? What brand? Age?
- Occupation
- Licensed Electrician
Never had it happen to me.
Lightning will most definitely do this as the increased voltage due to a nearby strike will also cause a rise in current and can therefore trip an ocpd-sometimes it may be only one or in your case, many. Obviously your going to want to check for damage due to surge- inspect bus, and breakers, pull devices, etc. Some guys will claim you will want to meg also, whether you do this is up to you.
One things for sure about lightning-all bets are off and it does what it wants to do.
Tony S
Senior Member
- Location
- Resting under the Major Oak UK
I would say it should be done as a sensible precaution against future problems. Problems that when they occur will all be the fault of whoever gave the go ahead to switch on.
I agree that megging is more than appropriate in this instance, and document everything.
mbrooke
Batteries Included
- Location
- United States
- Occupation
- Technician
Can also be from a primary falling into a secondary. In such a case I would meg, no way around it.
romex jockey
Senior Member
- Location
- Vermont
- Occupation
- electrician
Look at the bright side, at least mother nature is the obvious culprit.
Often said damage can be subtle, power quality appearing issues....
~RJ~
Often said damage can be subtle, power quality appearing issues....
~RJ~
mnbiker
Senior Member
- Location
- st.paul mn
Had it happen to my house, loud thunder and a bright flash at the same time. power went out, went to the main panel every other breaker tripped. in the morning I found that lightning had hit my yard light, besides the yard light I also lost a TV, stereo, gas range. garage door opener and a few other items.
mike_kilroy
Senior Member
- Location
- United States
i had same issue, but self induced. I made my own lightning simulation... bought a fancy new inverter duty backup generator. forgot to turn off the hot tub and water heater elements, fired her up. Not fancy enough to have an onboard voltmeter, so when it began to surge the gas engine rpm up and down in about 5 sec cycle, I shut it off pretty quickly. Not quick enough to stop my wife from jumping to the off switch for the 4 ceiling fans that she said sped up to like a zillion rpm (sounds like they tried to synch on the inverter's PWM freq!).
Not quickly enough. 1/2 the house breakers tripped - directly due to all the shorted electronics throught my home, garage, and external building office. took out the hottub control board, two golf cart chargers, the built in undercabinet microwave, 18 different X10 modules, 2 computer power supplies, a couple UPS, and a few other things I don't recall just now. ALL failures were MOVs shorting across the 120v input. If they did not take out the CB in the various panels, they blew themselves away off the pcb and cleared the fault that way. Lesson in here: new fangled inverter style generators are NOT far superior to the old motor gen sets that would have just bogged down instead of oscillating wildly to 200v on my 120v lines.
The small .5" diameter MOVs just blew open, leaving debree, the larger ones blew like bombs taking out the CB in panels. Took a Cb reset and try again to finally clear the 2"dia MOV in the microwave! Sounded like a shotgun both times!
I found about half the MOVs popped open so the device worked fine, but they needed the debree cleaned out internally - there were leads hanging around that could eventually short against something else. So for your lightning equivalent, you almost have to open up all electronics in the home to look and see if the blown MOV is hanging in a way to cause future problem....
Not quickly enough. 1/2 the house breakers tripped - directly due to all the shorted electronics throught my home, garage, and external building office. took out the hottub control board, two golf cart chargers, the built in undercabinet microwave, 18 different X10 modules, 2 computer power supplies, a couple UPS, and a few other things I don't recall just now. ALL failures were MOVs shorting across the 120v input. If they did not take out the CB in the various panels, they blew themselves away off the pcb and cleared the fault that way. Lesson in here: new fangled inverter style generators are NOT far superior to the old motor gen sets that would have just bogged down instead of oscillating wildly to 200v on my 120v lines.
The small .5" diameter MOVs just blew open, leaving debree, the larger ones blew like bombs taking out the CB in panels. Took a Cb reset and try again to finally clear the 2"dia MOV in the microwave! Sounded like a shotgun both times!
I found about half the MOVs popped open so the device worked fine, but they needed the debree cleaned out internally - there were leads hanging around that could eventually short against something else. So for your lightning equivalent, you almost have to open up all electronics in the home to look and see if the blown MOV is hanging in a way to cause future problem....
JDB3
Senior Member
- Location
- San Antonio, Texas
The house is fairly new. They had it custom built, I have never been inside of it. They live about an hour drive from me. No more complaints after the breakers were turned back on by them.
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