Wondering if any body has witnessed this? We have a golf cart repair shop. All of the outlets in the shop are protected by GFCI breakers (all single circuit separate nuetrals) All run in EMT. There are 3 lighting circuits, in their our raceway not shared with the outlet circuits. Building is wood frame steel siding and roof. There is a 200 amp service 1ph 120/240. Outlets are mainly used for charging golf carts, they use High frequency EZ-GO chargers. Here the thing when they come in the morning and turn on the lights it will trip every circuit breaker that has a charger plugged in to the outlet and plugged into the cart. But only the breakers on the same phase as the lighting. So if lighting circuit A phase is turned on the A phase outlets will trip, not the B phase outlets. We have have even tried to use a GFCI receptacle and get the same results. We have check every connection and went through every fixture to check for pinched wired, we have tried the hair dryer test to see if we had a ground neutral intertie and all test out. We are a little confused at this point because the shop 100 yards away, sme type of building, same fixtures same, panel except we used GFCI receptacles there instead of breakers and nothing trips in building
tripping GFCI breakers
- Thread starter deltarich
- Start date
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luckylerado
Senior Member
- Location
- Lake of the Ozarks
Is there a box with all the neutrals tied together. I understand that you indicated separate neutrals but I have seen many times where multiple circuits enter a box ALL neutrals get tied together under one wirenut.
Yeah we thought that too. Been through the boxes several times. Lighting and Outlet circuits are not even i same raceways or boxes. Funny thing, when the lights are turned on the amperage on the GFCI neutral wire increases? If we isolate the fixture from the ceiling the breaker will trip. We had the circuits in a common raceway at first and decided to seperate because we thought we were getting capacitance coupling but that didn't solve the issue
luckylerado
Senior Member
- Location
- Lake of the Ozarks
This will happen when you share a neutral with a same phase down stream.
kwired
Electron manager
- Location
- NE Nebraska
And would likely trip the GFCI faster then you can take a measurement and notice the rise in current.
- Location
- Placerville, CA, USA
- Occupation
- Retired PV System Designer
The only other simple explanation would be that some lights are powered through the GFCI and so both phase and neutral current increase in close to equal amounts, not tripping the GFCI.
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