Arc fault Breakers [RE-wrenches]

[Travis Creswell, Ozark Solar]

Hi Ray,

I thought they were for detecting short duration intermittent shorts that
don't have enough amps to trip the breaker but can still start fires.  Like
a loose wire on the outlet or slightly pinched wire inside the wall that
barely shorts when someone walks across the room or closes and opens the
door.  Is that about right?  We leave the wiring of the house up to the
residential electrician so I'm not familiar with them.

I can say that Outback inverters will provide a surge of 50 amps for about 5
seconds the go into "over current shut down".

Travis Creswell
Ozark Energy Services




-----Original Message-----
From: Ray Walters [mailto:walters at taosnet.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2005 10:20 AM
To: RE-wrenches at topica.com
Subject: Re: Arc fault Breakers [RE-wrenches]

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Hi Doug;

So does that mean the Arc Fault breakers are not going to work properly? 
Do we switch to another brand of breaker with a lower surge requirement? 
Or stack more inverters to boost the surge? This sounds like this could 
be a problem for alot of us, what have you done to fix this in the past?
Thanks for your reply.

Ray


>Many arc-fault breakers require a 70-amp (very short duration) surge to
trip
>them. The Outback inverters self-limit at 50-amps, so no tripping. Check
the
>specs on your breakers. This problem has surfaced a number of times with
>inverters (particularly the Xantrex DR-series).
>
>Cheers,
>Doug Pratt 
>
>
>Hi All;
>
>Is anyone having trouble with Arc Fault Breakers not working correctly
>on Outback Power Inverters? The electrical inspector has flunked 2 jobs
>(not our work) because his special tester isn't properly tripping the
>Homeline brand AFI breakers for the bedroom circuits. The electrician
>told me they work fine with their onboard self test.
>Is this a problem with the Inspector's tester, the breaker, the
>inverters, grounding/ bonding or.....????
>
>Thanks for any feed back,
>
>Ray Walters
>
>
>  
>

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