Gfci breakers all tripping/solar issue

[Greengiant1964]

For the last several months I have two Murray GFCI breakers in one panel box that trip at the same time at random.
Now recently, all 8 GFCI breakers trip at the same time in three different sub-panels. Twice in the last two weeks.
This is a fairly new installation about 3 years old.
Most interesting thing is that two of the eight GFCI breakers have zero load, nothing is connected to the end of the wires, they are in two different blank dry boxes for future wiring needs.
Why would they trip?

In the last two years we had power outages and still have some residual live power, keeping our lights dim.
We have two homes on our street that have solar panel installations and tied into the PG&E grid.
I have consulted with PG&E and they did not know what it could be so they changed the smart meter, we will wait and see approach.
Any thoughts??

 

[hurk27]

GFCI's generally do not care what is happening on the line side of the device, it can be a number of things that will cause them to trip but almost all of these will be on the load side.

Most common is ground leakage between hot and ground.
Neutral to ground leakage
Bootleg neutral (a circuit using the wrong neutral)
inductive kick back, (more common in older style GFCI's Murray breakers haven't been made in a while) At least as far as I know?
Shared neutrals with single pole breaker type GFCI's

Try removing the neutrals and hot from these breakers and check if there is any leakage to ground with a good DVM ohm meter, if this doesn't show anything then they might have to be replaced.
If you have a lot of motor loads or fluorescent lights, try cycling them to see if any of these trip the breakers, even a washer fill valve coil can trip a GFCI if the GFCI is the older style susceptible to inductive kick back.
Also if you have end use TVSS type surge suppressors on these circuits, they can cause a leakage to ground when surges hit the line, but rarely this is a problem.

 

[Greengiant1964]

Totally understand

Totally understand

I have tried metering some of the load sides, and there is no ground leakage.
As mentioned, I have two GFCI breakers that have nothing connected to the load side, and when I mean nothing connected two home runs wired nuts on the end.
In addition, all of the GFCI tripped at one time, I am in believe that maybe the PG& E meter is causing some interference.
There is no motor loads either. Now if there is some sort of inductive kick back to effect all of them at one time that could be. Also remember this is happening in two different sub panel boxes.
Thanks for the heads up on the age of breakers, maybe only 4 or 5 years old. I will re-confirm.
Thanks I will go back and check.

 

[SG-1]

If you cannot find "any of the above" you may want to monitor the line to see if the tripping occurs with power blinking off & on or when the power switches between the POCO & the inverter.

 

[aelectricalman]

Question.

Question.

I came into this on the tail end but Ive seen this topic scattered all over Mike Holts site with no appearent answers. I will tell you there is no way the Solar from across the street is causing this issue! Could it be a bad batch of GFCI's! Thats happened a lot to us lately. Don't use off brand GFCI's, its too risky and time consuming to have to replace them. It may not be the issue but I just wanted to get that out there. Secondly, I couldnt help but notice that you are a Junior member! Are you a seasoned electrician? Are you aware that multiwire circuits can not share a common neutral with both circuits having seperate GFCI protection! Just wanted to get that out there in case! Third, do all of the homes share a common transformer with house with troubles? If so, do you have access to the type of inverters on the PV system? Also, do you have access to ground level disconnect box for the AC (not the DC) voltage? Can you provide one years worth of electric usage from the utility that hosts these three houses? The PV produced power slightly leads the 60 HZ of the PO-CO, so that the solar power is sought after first! In the initial set up of PV, you will notice it takes roughly five minutes for the inverter to recognize and start to utilize the PV power. This is because the system is alinging the PV power to be used first along with syncing up the Hertz to match that of the power Company. The PV system generally does not require a neutral as it syncs up and deposits power to the grid as 240V AC, Line to Line. The inverters (as a matter of fact) do not even work when the Po Co is down. Being there is no neutral associated with the creation of PV power, I think you should look at other possiblities to find you answer. Sorry. If you have the electric bills for all three homes I can help you. Send me a private message and I will help.