Earth Leakage Tripping

[etalaat]

What are the reasons which tends to tripping of earth leakage circuit breaker

 

[tom baker]

Is this an overseas application? There is not a product by that name I am familar with.

 

[coulter]

I believe the primary reason is "earth leakage", generally caused by bad insulation.

carl

 

[roger]

Not that your questions can't be answered by some here, but as Tom questions, it seems that you are talking about an overseas installation, and if that is the case, you might want to check out some of the folks HERE

Roger

 

[Pierre C Belarge]

He could be asking about circuits that are protected by GFCI breakers. The length of the conductors on the load side of the GFCI breaker, if long enough will help to create nuisance tripping of the device due to the leakage current of the conductors.

 

[Bob NH]

Reasons for tripping Earth Leakage Circuit Interrupter (Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter in the US)

1. Fault from ungrounded conductor to ground (earth), causing unequal currents in the ungrounded (hot) and grounded (neutral) circuit conductors passing through the measuring circuit of the Earth Leakage Circuit Interrupter
2. Fault from the grounded conductor (neutral) to ground (earth), causing the current returning on the neutral to be different than the current on the ungrounded (hot) conductor because some of the current is returning to the grounded point in the system by a path other than through the Earth Leakage Circuit Interrupter

 

[klrogers]

I remember back in my early teens ( early 1970's) my father had a shop in the United Kingdom, that had a device (earth leakage circuit breaker ?) on the 3 phase incoming power that would trip on any ground fault (short to ground).
Since this was on all three phases and there was mixed 3 phase and single phase loads, I'm assuming that it measured current flow in the ground (earth) conductor. This would of course be totally different to the GFCI operation we are using today in the USA where we are checking for any difference in current flow between the hot and neutral (or second hot in the case of 240v)

 

[etalaat]

I mean the breaker which installed between hot and neutral wire.

 

[dereckbc]

I assume you mean GFCI CB's. A lot of electronic equipment has components installed between L-G and N-G which will cause GFCI circuits to operate. The components are there for , TVSS, RFI and FCC purposes. Also as mentioned very long circuits will leak current through the insulation to ground via cable capacitance.

 

[robbietan]

I have seen earth leakage protection being activated by improper grounding. The facility have one wing that has a ground, another wing with another ground and both not connected to the transformer secondary ground. One wing gets the 'earth leakage', the other, does not. When they tied all the grounding to the transformer secondary, the trippings stopped.

BTW, the majority of the loads of the facility are electronic loads