Eaton afci GFCI breaker tripped on one phase in a panel.

D

Davids1973

Member
Location
Florida
Occupation
Electrician
Got a service call today from a customer that said they had multiple Breakers tripped in their panel. After arriving site I checked the main disconnect outside and they had appropriate voltage . I went inside the residence and checked the voltage at the panel inside and all was appropriate. All the art fault ground fault breakers on the B phase were tripped. I reset them all and they held. The homeowner told me this isn't the first time that this has happened that is a regular occurrence. I had a hunch it was a critter issue. I went out to the meter main combo and cut the meter tags and pulled the meter. As suspected there was a frog bridging the gap between the can and the B phase. After the critter removal all was good. Just wanted to out that out there for anybody running across the same situation.
 
I am pretty sure Eaton has an over voltage trip in their AFCIs. So a voltage spike on one leg could do that. Not sure how long the spike has to last for the device to trip. As I recall the trip voltage is 140.
 
CoolWill said:
I just can't see how a fault to ground on the line side would trip an arc fault.
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I’ve had it happen twice with a bad connection at the pole mounted utility transformer. Square D QO. It would trip multiple afci’s at the same time. Wife asked what the red light was on the transformer when she went out one morning. It was a glowing connection. Poco “fixed” it. A couple months later, the tripping started again, poco replaced the lug on the transformer. Now a year later, it’s starting again. Thermal scan from the ground shows it’s getting hot again.
 
Davids1973 said:
Got a service call today from a customer that said they had multiple Breakers tripped in their panel. After arriving site I checked the main disconnect outside and they had appropriate voltage . I went inside the residence and checked the voltage at the panel inside and all was appropriate. All the art fault ground fault breakers on the B phase were tripped. I reset them all and they held. The homeowner told me this isn't the first time that this has happened that is a regular occurrence. I had a hunch it was a critter issue. I went out to the meter main combo and cut the meter tags and pulled the meter. As suspected there was a frog bridging the gap between the can and the B phase. After the critter removal all was good. Just wanted to out that out there for anybody running across the same situation.
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So you're saying the "B" phase croaked? :D
 
Yes I'll be phase Breakers that were afci/Gfci. I did some reading on another post on here and saw that it does check the imbalance from the line to the load and that essentially that can cause it to trip if there's an issue on the line.
 
hillbilly1 said:
I’ve had it happen twice with a bad connection at the pole mounted utility transformer. Square D QO. It would trip multiple afci’s at the same time. Wife asked what the red light was on the transformer when she went out one morning. It was a glowing connection. Poco “fixed” it. A couple months later, the tripping started again, poco replaced the lug on the transformer. Now a year later, it’s starting again. Thermal scan from the ground shows it’s getting hot again.
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Sounds like the kind of work PG&E does out here. The heat from the loose lug damaged the lug landing (the copper became annealed) and without replacing the landing, the problem returned.
 
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