Court lights go out

[danno68]

We are having trouble with our lights at our local tennis club. There are 4 sets of lights each fed with 220v from our panel. When all 4 sets are on, the main breaker in the panel trips after about 15 minutes. The main is a 150 amp 2 pole brekaer and each set of lights are fed from 60 amp breakers in this panel. The 60 amp breakers have never tripped. The main has been changed once but it does not seem to have fixed our problem. I guess we believed it was fixed because the trips are somewhat intermitant, meaning we have ran the lights for a long period of time without a trip. I measured the current at the main with all lights on and got a reading of about 108 amps.
Thanks

 

[roger]

Try to contract someone with some recording type meters that might give some information that would coincide with what is happening at the time of a trip.

Roger

 

[480sparky]

Are the lights fed underground? You may have a damaged cable and is leaking current to ground.

 

[brantmacga]

a bad lamp can cause this.

 

[davidr43229]

While a bad lamp can cause this, I would submit that the Breaker is enclosed and probably mounted outside. This being the summer, the ambient temp within that disconnect is hot and is fooling the OCPD, thus nusience tripping, with the elevated heat.
Just my $.02

 

[Dennis Alwon]

We are having trouble with our lights at our local tennis club. There are 4 sets of lights each fed with 220v from our panel. When all 4 sets are on, the main breaker in the panel trips after about 15 minutes. The main is a 150 amp 2 pole brekaer and each set of lights are fed from 60 amp breakers in this panel. The 60 amp breakers have never tripped. The main has been changed once but it does not seem to have fixed our problem. I guess we believed it was fixed because the trips are somewhat intermitant, meaning we have ran the lights for a long period of time without a trip. I measured the current at the main with all lights on and got a reading of about 108 amps.
Thanks

If there is a bad cable or light causing the problem then I would disconnect one set of lights at a time and see what set is causing the problem. Disconnect set 1 if it trips then disconnect set 2 while reconnecting set 1 and so on till you find the problem set. Then do the same from there.

 

[danno68]

thanks

thanks

Thanks to all for all the suggestions. I have taken some of the steps mentioned but now feel I have a better idea to look a little closer at a few things. There is one lamp that is out in one of the poles and I'm also measuring an unbalanced load on this circuit. Not sure how I'm going to get up there for a closer look as we are on a pretty tight budget. As for the ambiant temp, I don't want to rule it out but being located in Canada, the evenings cool down quite a bit and the hottest part of summer is now past.
Thanks again for all the input.

 

[jinglis]

Is there any chance that this breaker is tripping in conjunction with rainy spells. I have seen underground cable faults only appear after a rain. A megger may? locate this fault if it exists. Also, do you have separate fuses on each balllast? I have 240 volt ball diamond lights that don't have individual fuses and when one ballast goes to ground the whole set is out until the bad ballast is isolated or replaced. I like to put my fuses at ground level if possible to simplify the troubleshooting aspect.