Breakers tripping when power goes out.

[bcl]

Hey all, I've got a customer who says his power goes out often where there are a lot of new homes being built. Whenever the power goes out, multiple single pole breakers trip. I think it's the AFCI breakers, but he can't really confirm. Set up is main breaker/ service panel exterior, lighting and outlets on the interior sub panel. The interior breakers are the ones tripping. He said once that all the breakers on one side of the panel had tripped when the power came back on, other times it's just a few breakers. He's not the only one in the neighborhood who is having the same problem.

The only work I've done on the house is install a surge protector (Siemens FSPD), it was built in 2016.

I've swapped out a number of spec grade CH AFCI breakers in the same neighborhood that begin nuisance tripping after 3-4 years, but I haven't had a problem with them tripping every time the power goes out and comes on again.

Any suggestions? POCO doesn't take any responsibility, and the problem isn't going away as long as there is new construction going on in the neighborhood. The power goes out a couple times a month.

 

[ramsy]

This is a customer service issue with the circuit breaker manufacturer product support team

Contractors that that rely on the internet, typically refuse to make that call, or keep trained persons available

 

[bcl]

This is a customer service issue with the circuit breaker manufacturer product support team

Contractors that that rely on the internet, typically refuse to make that call, or keep trained persons available

Hahaha.

This is literally an online forum for contractors to ask one another questions. I'm not relying on the internet for anything. I asked a bunch of electricians like me if they've ever seen this before because I'm curious.

Thanks for your genuinely helpful reply. You are a gem for our industry.

 

[hillbilly1]

With frequent power outages, it most likely is a problem on the poco side. The arcfaults will pick up arcs on the line side. I have personally found this out. Poco had a bad connection on the pole mount transformer, twice. I once had a Church that would lose the lights during services from a temporary outage. Lights were HID, so they had to cool down before they would restrike. Had a meeting with the poco, they claimed they had no issues on their end. So I told them I was putting a voltage recorder on the service. Before I could put it on the next week, the maintenance guy said there was a flurry of Georgia Power trucks running up and down the road in front of the Church. The problem mysteriously disappeared!

 

[ModbusMan]

Sounds similar to all the AFCI/CAFCI tripping I had as my utility rolled through the neighborhood upgrading everyone to the new fancy pants meters. I'd go with hillbilly's notion... threaten a PQMii recording and see if things don't sort themselves out, they're less than a grand on ebay.

 

[bcl]

With frequent power outages, it most likely is a problem on the poco side. The arcfaults will pick up arcs on the line side. I have personally found this out. Poco had a bad connection on the pole mount transformer, twice. I once had a Church that would lose the lights during services from a temporary outage. Lights were HID, so they had to cool down before they would restrike. Had a meeting with the poco, they claimed they had no issues on their end. So I told them I was putting a voltage recorder on the service. Before I could put it on the next week, the maintenance guy said there was a flurry of Georgia Power trucks running up and down the road in front of the Church. The problem mysteriously disappeared!

Good idea with the voltage recorder. I had made that recommendation to the homeowner, but since the POCO has been so unresponsive I didn't think it would matter. Knowing that two of you have had the same experience, it gives me more confidence that the will help remedy the problem.

 

[jaggedben]

It's not obvious how an arc fault breaker would tell the difference between series arcing on the load side vs. series arcing on the supply side. Waveform would be interrupted in a similar manner either way.

 

[bcl]

It's not obvious how an arc fault breaker would tell the difference between series arcing on the load side vs. series arcing on the supply side. Waveform would be interrupted in a similar manner either way.

My thoughts as well. As far as I can tell from what the customer is saying (I've never been there to observe it) it's only happening on the AFCI breakers.

 

[hillbilly1]

Good idea with the voltage recorder. I had made that recommendation to the homeowner, but since the POCO has been so unresponsive I didn't think it would matter. Knowing that two of you have had the same experience, it gives me more confidence that the will help remedy the problem.

We always rented them, didn’t use one enough to justify buying it.

 

[bcl]

We always rented them, didn’t use one enough to justify buying it.

Hmm. Where do you rent those from? I'm guessing the customer's going to balk at the cost of figuring it out, but there might be only so many freezers-full-of-meat-going-bad he can tolerate.