Circuit Breaker OK But Elaborate Trip During Heavy Rain & Thunder

Maybe this will help:

"Nuisance trips[edit]

While voltage and current on the earth line is usually fault current from a live wire, this is not always the case, thus there are situations in which an ELCB can nuisance trip.

When an installation has two connections to Earth, a nearby high current lightning strike will cause a voltage gradient in the soil, presenting the ELCB sense coil with enough voltage to cause it to trip.

If the installation's Earth rod is placed close to the Earth rod of a neighbouring building, a high Earth leakage current in the other building can raise the local ground potential and cause a voltage difference across the two Earths, again tripping the ELCB. Close Earth rods are unsuitable for ELCB use for this reason, but in real life such installations are sometimes encountered.

Both RCDs and ELCBs are prone to nuisance trips from normal harmless Earth leakage to some degree. On one hand ELCBs are on average older, and hence tend to have less well developed filtering against nuisance trips, and on the other hand ELCBs are inherently immune to some of the causes of false trips RCDs suffer, and are generally less sensitive than RCDs. In practice RCD nuisance trips are much more common.

Another cause of nuisance tripping is due to accumulated or burden currents caused by items with lowered insulation resistance. This may occur due to older equipment, or equipment with heating elements, or even wiring in buildings in the tropics where prolonged damp and rain conditions can cause the insulation resistance to lower due to moisture tracking. If there is a 30 mA protective device in use and there is a 10 mA burden from various sources then the unit will trip at 20 mA. The individual items may each be electrically safe but a large number of small burden currents accumulates and reduces the tripping level. This was more a problem in past installations where multiple circuits were protected by a single ELCB.

Heating elements of the tubular form are filled with a very fine powder that can absorb moisture if the element has not be used for some time. In the tropics, this may occur, for example if a clothes drier has not been used for a year or a large water boiler used for coffee, etc. has been in storage. In such cases, if the unit is allowed to power up without RCD protection then it will normally dry out and successfully pass inspection. This type of problem can be seen even with brand new equipment."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_leakage_circuit_breaker

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https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/wifi-circuit-breaker.html

Thanks for your prompt clarification. What I do not understand is that trips can happen when the house is left vacant (no eletric equipments nor lightings are switched on) - house under renovation.

Will providing additional earthing points directly with one of the power points help?

i am concern that the frequent trips n subsequent restarts will do damage to the fridge n other equipments.

See my post #6.

Another factor is that the earth wire to the upstairs is longer, higher resistance and probably runs close to live/neutral in a cable or conduit etc. In contrast, ground floor earth lead from ELCB probably runs away from live/neutral rather than sharing a run.

If the problem is radio interference with ELCB, maybe making a solenoid with the wire to the earth rod (2 inch radius, 10 inch long, 10 turns would be a few microhenries, no effect at power frequency) would help.

Multiple earthing will not help - just provide more entry points for trouble.

Fridges start/stop all the time, one more is negligible!

<...left vacant (no eletric equipments nor lightings are switched on)...>

In that case, simply reset the breaker upon arrival; it doesn't need an engineering solution.

<...the frequent trips n subsequent restarts will do damage to the fridge n other equipments...>

This is nonsense, because <...no eletric equipments nor lightings are switched on...>. If anything were to do damage to any equipment that is <...switched on...> it would be a surge in the line and neutral conductors, or both, as a result of a lightning strike to them. No amount of domestic installation will protect against that.

Review the installation against current local electrical codes and verify that it is correct. If in doubt, consult a qualified local Electrician.

ELCB or RCD, what are the supply characteristics, TT, TN-C-S, PME or TN-S?

I still haven't figured out what DB stands for...let alone the other acronyms. I guess if we don't know what the acronyms stand for, we can't be good for much...

DB distribution box where circuit breakers, elcb are housed

Ahh, in the US we call them panels, (i.e. breaker panels, distribution panels) where a box is generally used only to join or distribute wires. DB is more often dynamic braking, though your DB at #45 in Dr. Slack's reference still appeared before dynamic braking. elcb is GFI or GFCI, the old earth vs ground.

I have an ELCB that trips whenever the voltage changes suddenly from the utility, I assume a low excursion, but could be high, sometimes lightning, sometimes not, about twice to 3 times a year. This circuit has many outside outlets on it, sub-feed from a GFI /elcb receptacle close to my main distribution breaker panel.

As others have mentioned, distributed capacitance on your wiring will discharge & charge with a change in supply voltage, some of the charging current appears to return on the ground/earth wire that is closely coupled (physically) with your neutral or current return wire, so your ELCB notes the difference very quickly and trips.

I took my auxiliary refrigerator finally off the circuit, should not have been on a GFI in the first place. As also noted, the fix is to reduce the wire length connected to each breaker. Even long extension cords can capacitively couple earth & current return enough to provide apparent leakage current, especially during inductive load application.

Flipping the ELCB off during an event is likely stressing the other devices electrically close to the circuit breaker, they however are typically designed to take that abuse.

RCD is a TLA.

ELCB is a FLA.

The meanings of these and many others can be found at AFDC.

You found the definitive proof that "posters with problems" should not use abbreviations. A list from AFDC would make them think.

A Romulan Cloaking Device [Star Trek] would make this problem disappear!

Switch the gear from one room and position to another. You will find out if it's the location, leg, or equipment. At least you'll have the very a better idea.

Everything on the ground level has more capacitance & possible leakage to ground than those on the first floor. Maybe outside lights are fed from ground floor and leak water in heavy rain.

The earth fault device does not care if the current comes from the neutral, which may be earthed outside the building and is connected even when devices are switched off or unplugged.

You may be able to get a slower, less sensitive or cleverer ELCB. However, the earth current might be power frequency currents due to flashover and automatic reclose of line protection - several cycles duration.

Maybe unplugging or (double pole) switching-off on all non-essential items when unoccupied?

Everyone else has gone into the technical part of this problem to solve it. Here is what to do to get rid of the problem. Disconnect the wires from the GFI that is the first one on the circuit and all sockets on that branch. Install a single GFI/socket To replace the sockets that was there. With the existing wiring, wire them up in parallel. The old wiring was wired through the first GFI and it provided protection for all down stream sockets. Now each one provides protection for only that outlet/gfi. The simple explanation why yours was tripping is that the one length of wire down stream was longer than the other circuit so it has a "longer antenna" to pick up the emf in the atmosphere during lighting storms.

I had the same exact problem with a gfi in the garage and it ran all over the house. CHEAP BUILDER! Made these changes and have never had a problem again.

Good Luck, Old Salt

Yep, Disable or outrightly get rid of the god damned things and life is good. They are one of those things that seem like a good idea but in reality are nothing but a source of problems themselves brought about by insurance companies overreaching what they should have say over just to find more 'what if' based excuses to not do the job you pay them for.

You wont find a single one of them anywhere I have any control over.

If something truly needs GFI protection it had better have it built into its own cord or self otherwise it ain't getting any from me.

It is important to check with qualified personnel,tripping will not occur unless there is a fault like current leakages from a peeled cable either on any of the equipment or along the cables to inside the DB.The problems might be there but it is more pronouce during rainy period due to moisture causing high conductance,try and check with multimeter for tracy and ensure no power incoming from any source.

Is there any outdoor receptacles on that circuit that might be getting damp from the rain?

Not at IP56, surely?

Since I have no idea what alphabet soup you are drinking today, I will offer nothing other than a smile!

Whatever trips your trigger? I thought you were talking about decibels for a small moment. But then I could not figure out what the 90's (elcb) you are referring to actually are? Are you worried about bending electrons? Don't.

Try to interchange both ELCB from the first level to the ground floor and see if next time during heavy rain with thunder and lightning and see if the ground level DB ELCB trips upon lightning or not. If it the same problem occurs then it is the problem as describe by all Guru's. If nothing happen to the ground level ELCB then maybe the ELCB are slightly defected.