ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area afci parallel series

Sparky, I am very familiar with the requirement for eguipment level GF protection on 480Y/277 volt services 1000 amps or greater. As your post says, the higher voltage and current was causing an unusually high number of burndowns.

The issue here is:
Do you want some selective response to an arcing event, or do you want to cut service to the residence? Other than trying to find the cause of the trip, which is much more difficult and time consuming with a main breaker approach, there is the issue of liability. Let's say that you are on vacation, and the receptacle that feeds alarm clock in your bedroom has a loose terminal that causes an AFCI trip. If you have the protection at the main, you completely lose power to your refrigeration, AC, security system etc. I think most folks would prefer having the protection on each circuit.

I can speak from personal experience of having to deal with a main GFI on a residential service, and I have to say that it can be a real pain.

Just imagine being, say, in your shower when the heating element shorts to ground and trips the main GFI plunging the whole house into darkness. (Yes, it happened to me!)

Whatever the current financial arguments, from a practical point of view I would urge you not to go toward a main AFCI.

Customers may baulk at the expense of individual branch AFCIs, but I think if this sort of scenario was explained to them they may realize that individual circuit protection is a better way to go, technically if not financially at present.

Re the cost, I don't doubt that as production steps up the prices will come down. Over here a regular 16A C/B runs about $7, but because a 16A GFI breaker is so little used it costs in excess of $50.


[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 05-09-2002).]

Brendan,
If I may ask a question (and if it's already been answered, kindly point me in that way).

Is there a fairly simple way to troubleshoot a AFCI fed 125v circuit that is tripping, without tracing the entire circuit to each connection (device, splice, etc), or spending thousands on a first generation testing tool, or a IR thermo device?

Dallas