audio Posted November 22, 2008 Share Posted November 22, 2008 The disjoncteur différential de branchement (direct from EDF) set at 45 amps trips off from time to time with only about15amps being used.The disjoncteurs in the tableau électrique do not trip.Perhaps a fault somewhere or a surge from EDF, I do not knowIs this problem down to EDF , or for an independent qualified electrician?The original electrical contractor is a ‘very difficult’ person to deal with, so he will not help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
La Guerriere Posted November 22, 2008 Share Posted November 22, 2008 This may be a dumb question, but are you really using 15 amps or is it 15 kW ? What is actually on when you trip out ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
audio Posted November 22, 2008 Author Share Posted November 22, 2008 The last time,just the géothermie heating pump, which has it's own protection overload of 20amps and my PC, that's all. Not even 15 amps I would have thought. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnOther Posted November 22, 2008 Share Posted November 22, 2008 La Guerriere, 15KW would demand a disjoncteur somewhat larger than 45A [;-)]It could be a surge, although I'd say that was the least likely if it's happening regularly, or could be a fault with the disjoncteur, or with one of your own electrical appliances, hard to say.Is your house all electric. When you say only 15A being used how are you determining that. If your geothermal pump is taking that then you have precious little left for other devices. What is it actually rated at ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
La Guerriere Posted November 22, 2008 Share Posted November 22, 2008 Mmmmm, I agree this is weird. Does it trip when the geo pump kicks in ? [8-)] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
La Guerriere Posted November 22, 2008 Share Posted November 22, 2008 Also what does the plate on the pump say ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
audio Posted November 22, 2008 Author Share Posted November 22, 2008 [quote user="ErnieY"]La Guerriere, 15KW would demand a disjoncteur somewhat larger than 45A [;-)]Is your house all electric. When you say only 15A being used how are you determining that. If your geothermal pump is taking that then you have precious little left for other devices. What is it actually rated at ?[/quote]15A is a guess. Without taking various panels off to see the actual rating, the motor is probably 3kw but I have 45A which I calculate to be 9.9Kw, so I should have a lot more in hand. Surely if there is a fault with an appliance, it's own breaker should trip and not just the disjoncteur de branchement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cat Posted November 22, 2008 Share Posted November 22, 2008 What about water heating, do you have a ballon? Does the power trip out mainly when the heures creuses start? Do you have fridges or freezers running, the pumps draws a fair bit of current when they kick in.If the fault lies with the appliance (an earth fault for example) then it should be the trip on your circuit board that trips, not the main disjoncteur at the meter position. Having said all that, we had terrible problems with our disjoncteur tripping, always in the middle of the night, and made more annoying by the location of the switch(on a pole by the side of the road, a good minute's walk away in the cold and the dark). After many complaints, EDF finally came out and changed the disjoncteur, as they suspected that ours was perhaps faulty/too sensitive. Since then, touch wood and fingers crossed, it has not tripped out at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Punch Posted November 22, 2008 Share Posted November 22, 2008 The EDF disjoncteur is in fact a combined overcurent and earth fault protection device ( disjoncteur differentielle), with an earth fault trip current of 500 milliamps. This means that not only will it trip out in the even of exceeding it's rating of 45 amps, but it will also trip out if there is an earth fault leakage over 500 milliamps, no matter how much power you are drawing.Does your tableau electrique have a interrupteur differentielle (RCD in English) fitted which is rated at 30 milliamp trip ? It should have but if the answer is no, then the above could be the answer to the problem - ie; A leakage to earth is tripping out the EDF disjoncteur. If the answer is yes then the problem lies elsewhere.If your supply is a three phase supply then the maximum power that you can draw from any one phase is 15A per phase. So although the EDF disjoncteur is rated at 45 amps you could easily trip it out by drawing over 15 amps on any one of your circuits. It could of course, as has been sugggested be the start up current of the geothermal heat pump - if it is single phase then these are notorious for high startup currents, which is why the companies that supply them prefer to install three phase units.I recently had a customer that had a single phase geothermie installed and they cannot use it as the EDF incoming lines are so old and small that the volt drop when the pump tries to start is so large that the pump will not run. The EDF are going to upgrade 1km of line tosolve the problem. www.punchardrenovation.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
audio Posted November 23, 2008 Author Share Posted November 23, 2008 Thank you all very much for your replies.I did have a problem with heures creuses, the contacteur jour/nuit showed red (on) in the window 24/24 and during the night with the water heating, w/m and d/w running the disjonteur tripped very frequently. EDF came, found nothing wrong except that the disjonteur was set incorrectly at 30amps, all seem ok after this was changed to 45amps. Now the problem has returned, not as bad as before but oddly the dis. trips during the day when very little is running, this maybe when the heating pump kicks in.I do have 30 mil/amp inter/diff at the tableau electrique.I do have a single phase pump geothermie.Cathy, I possibly have the same problem as you experienced a too sensitive/faulty disjoncteur.Anyway thanks again, I will start by calling EDFRegardsAudio Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gyn_Paul Posted November 23, 2008 Share Posted November 23, 2008 do you have one of the new digital meters? if so, one of the selectable display options is the max current used since it was previously zero'd. This will show you definitively how high a current your appliances are consuming, however, I wouldn't have though it would react quickly enough to register a large heat-pump start-up spike. Unless Punch kows differently ???paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Punch Posted November 24, 2008 Share Posted November 24, 2008 That's a good point - On a single phase electronic meter I think it is either N°4 or N°5 to see what the maximum demand has been, but I have no idea if a start up current would register or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Trollope Posted November 24, 2008 Share Posted November 24, 2008 [quote user="Punch"]That's a good point - On a single phase electronic meter I think it is either N°4 or N°5 to see what the maximum demand has been, but I have no idea if a start up current would register or not.[/quote]No it wouldn't; they are all "averaging" meters.I have a customer whose (temporary supply) breaker trips out occasionally - always at 07:30 hours (or thereabouts). It is nothing in the property, so I can only assume that it is noise caused by some large piece of (agricultural) machinery. Would this explain the OPs problem? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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