Good tip, and also prompts me to remind that a thermal camera will see a lot of problems the eye cannot. We have a fluke thermal camera and I make it a practise to survey a customer's electrical room prior to doing a proposal, as identifying the overloaded components can help to avoid the blame game later. It's the old story, you installed solar so you are responsible for everything that went wrong later. I did a survey recently for a customer as part of a proposal and with the camera could see that the middle phase on their 800A main breaker was very hot, although it carried the lowest current relevant to the others. The main breaker was clearly faulty and would fail soon. Had we a solar installation in place, it would have been construed as being because we back fed the breaker.
On Sun, Nov 1, 2015 at 3:46 PM, Daniel Duffield <[email protected]> wrote: > Some years ago, we had a similiar problem with a 50 amp breaker nuisance > tripping, we over analyzed the problem and still could not prevent this > erratic issue, sometimes it would work fine for weeks - sometimes days > apart, sometimes on sunny days, sometimes on cloudy days. > In the end the answer was simple and so easy it was overlooked more than > once. > It was just a matter of the proper torque, with the copper compression > fitting on a Sq D QO breaker, just a hair breathe too loose, enough heat > would build over many hours to change the trip curve. > We measured, swapped breakers, everything you could think off until we > employed a torque wrench with a screwdriver bit. > Problem vanished, never to come back. > Not saying this is answer, but sometimes tightening a compression fitting > to the correct "feel", by a journeman electrician with 20 years experience, > is not good enough. If your crew or organization has torque screwdrivers, > we had no excuse not to use them, and back then we found out the hardway. > > Daniel O. Duffield > NABCEP Certified PV Installer since 2005 > EE 98 & ER01, Albuquerque, New Mexico, IEEE member 1995 > DPW Solar (Integration-Division) > > > _______________________________________________ > List sponsored by Redwood Alliance > > List Address: [email protected] > > Change listserver email address & settings: > http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org > > List-Archive: > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html > > List rules & etiquette: > www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm > > Check out or update participant bios: > www.members.re-wrenches.org > > -- Chris Mason NABCEP Certified Solar PV Installer™ Solar Design Engineer Generac Generators Industrial technician www.cometsolar.com <http://www.cometenergysystems.com> 264.235.5670 869.662.5670 Skype: netconcepts
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