Power tripping while show is static (no lights on)

[Conrad]

Probably the wrong place to post this but not sure

Does anyone know why my power would be tripping while my show is static as in not powering any lights only power supplies.
I have power consumption monitors on all my power point connections and im only using like 2 amp while static on my heaviest loaded powerpoint and no where near my 25 amp limit for the entire circuit even on full white.
Only thing I can think of is possibly my heat pump shares the same circuit and is pushing it over the edge

I'm no electrician so go easy on me haha

 

[merryoncherry]

Is it tripping as an overload fault, or a ground fault (or arc fault -- probably not)? It is interesting that the heat pump is on that circuit... around here the heat pump would not be sharing with anything...

 

[Conrad]

Is it tripping as an overload fault, or a ground fault (or arc fault -- probably not)? It is interesting that the heat pump is on that circuit... around here the heat pump would not be sharing with anything...

Upon further inspection I was wrong. Heat pump is on its own circuit.
Not sure what its tripping as as its just tripping the main breaker for all the powerpoints in the whole house (yes i know i need dedicated circuit for lights)
Hopefully dedicated circuits next year but until then kinda have to make this work if possible
One other thing is that all my powerpoints for my show come from the 1 household powerpoint cable out into the shed. Possibly too much for that cable on its own?

 

[merryoncherry]

I am still trying to understand what breaker is tripping. Do you have a picture of it after it trips? There are several kinds of trips:
1. Overload (slow), where you draw a little more current than the breaker allows over a prolonged period, the more over you are the shorter the time before it trips, but minutes or seconds.
2. Overload (fast), where you draw a lot of current, more than typical inrush current, it will shut down in milliseconds
3. Ground fault / residual current, where it detects that electricity is escaping from the system - has found a path to ground other than through the wires and is therefore shocking something, at least a little
4. Arc fault, where the breaker doesn't like the shape of the load pattern it sees. These are not common but are used here for bedrooms in new construction.

If it is a #1 kind of overload, you will need more circuits. In a pinch, use extension cords to spread the load, unless it is the whole house, overloaded, you're stuck.
If it is a #2 kind of overload, do the same as #1, or maybe you can get away with starting the show equipment in stages
If it is a #3 kind of ground fault, which is usually indicated by the device that tripped, find the fault... some times you can do this by plugging more and more in until it trips. This happens a lot in shows with a lot of outdoor extension cords, especially when wet.
If it is an arc fault, those breakers just don't like the load pattern of light shows, and you would have to change to a circuit with a different kind of breaker on it. (Rare, but happened to me.)

I am not sure you truly need dedicated circuits for the lights, but that makes it much easier to shut the show off and save power, or predict the power draw (since there's only one thing there), or if the show trips the breaker you don't lose anything else, or to hard reboot something without going outside... so I do that as much as I can... the only things sharing with the controllers at this point are some lighting fixtures and show network equipment.

What are your "back of the envelope" load calculations for your equipment?

Can you describe the cable to the powerpoints and the breaker for it?

 

[ryanschristmaslights]

Does your power trip off immediately as soon as you turn on your show equipment? If yes, can you turn on your power supplies one at a time or in groups (not all at once) and does that stop the trip? One theory is in-rush current at the time of switching on all your power supplies may be too high. Assuming this is the cause then the following discussion might be useful on workarounds (use timers with staggered on times, use different circuits, etc):

Turning on Power supplies

I read on another thread that when you turn on the Power supply, there is an inrush which may trip the fuse if there are too many PSUs on the same circuit. My question is how do people sequence the PSU's to turn on at different times to avoid the inrush issue?

auschristmaslighting.com

 

[BAZMick]

Possibly too much for that cable on its ow

Not when at idle? Not a sparky but I encourage you to get one out to investigate. Something on that circuit that the RCD doesn't like

 

[Freman]

27 X 350 watt PSUs, that's approximately 40 amps worth of load, even idle controllers and pixels are going to draw some current, and all of these PSUs will have inrush current.

Every home I've lived in in the past 20 years has power point circuits as a 20 amp breaker shared across a few 10 amp outlets...

Show us a photo of what's tripping.

 

[merryoncherry]

Now, we use wimpy ol' 120V here which makes it all different, but 27x350W PSUs on a circuit is 2x as many as I can get due to inrush issues... and 4-5x as many as would be able to do full power draw for an extended period of time... I still push the boundary more than I should but this year don't have any circuit with even half that many.

 

[Conrad]

this is the breaker that trips. The one with the black switch

 

[merryoncherry]

this is the breaker that trips. The one with the black switch

I agree with the chatroom discussion, you should get your sparky to visit, the sooner the better. You'll save a lot of time and effort messing around getting it to work, be safer, not have to worry so much in the future about nuisance trips, etc...

Anyway, that breaker is marked as RCD so it will trip if current is going somewhere it shouldn't - ground fault - what ever term you like to use for that... it will trip. It doesn't look like there is a visual indicator that would let you know if that is the reason for the trip, but if it trips under light load, that's probably why. You'd be looking for poor connections, wet connections, damaged/deteriorated wires, malfunctioning equipment, and other safety hazards. If you (i.e. your sparky) can put your show equipment on a separate RCD that would help... help isolate the problem, help it from taking out as many things when something goes wrong, etc. I don't know about there, but here you can get outlets and extension cords with protection, and hope they'd trip before the main breaker, so that might help short term. (Also best of luck - sometimes a handful of very small leakages add up to one leakage big enough to cause the trip and it never seems to get isolated to one spot, very frustrating, but the solution again is to split things up.)

 

[Freman]

Yeh that guy will trip (usually) on a ground/earth leak... or 63 amps where it'll probably cease to function. Either way the answer was always a sparky

 

[David_AVD]

My guess is the combined leakage to earth of all the power supplies and your existing appliances. A single RCD for all circuits is just asking for trouble these days with all the suppression capacitors present in electronic power supplies.

 

[Notenoughlights]

Extension leads run across the ground outside often can lead to leakage via capacitance and I had a lot of issues with that till I split everything up into 16 seperate RCD circuits, occasionally I'll get an issue if it rains but nowhere near as bad as it was.

 

[David_AVD]

Spending some $$ to upgrade your switchboard to an RCBO (breaker / RCD combo) per circuit is a good investment, not only for blinky reasons. You can buy RCBO in single pole size (same as old circuit breaker) so there's no penalty space wise. You'll actually gain space as you don't need the old chunky RCD any more. Use that gained space to ensure each circuit is on it's own RCBO.

 

[Skymaster]

My guess is the combined leakage to earth of all the power supplies and your existing appliances. A single RCD for all circuits is just asking for trouble these days with all the suppression capacitors present in electronic power supplies.

100% agree with David here. I've had this issue with numerous (>20) computers connected at once to the same RCD.

And those old clay coloured clipsals are ancient so probably it's trip current is out of whack too.

Get individual RCBOs fitted and at at least two dedicated circuits for your Christmas lights.