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Bordercollie's avatar
Bordercollie
Explorer
Feb 04, 2016

Ground Fault Isolators (GFI's)

We have been having problems with loss of power at receptacles inside our garage and outside on the patio. Bruce, our favorite electrician, replaced one of our GFI receptacles that had been kicking off in the garage for reasons unknown. GFI receptacles, like a lot of other imported things you buy at Home Depot, may be defective/overly sensitive out of the box or become defective over time. GFI's often trip in RV's for no good reason, and may be defective themselves. Not to be confused with circuit breakers, but GFI's can trip from line voltage fluctuations in 110 AC circuits as well as ground faults.
Class C

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  • Harvard's avatar
    Harvard
    Explorer
    Feb 04, 2016
    To tie these first 2 posts together:

    The Capacitative Reactance (Xc) = 1 / 2pi x Frequency x Capacitance

    The lesser the Xc the more the current.

    Electrical noise or spikes are typically a higher frequency then the normal 60 Hertz so for a given capacitance the higher noise current can trip the GFI.
  • Harvard's avatar
    Harvard
    Explorer
    Feb 04, 2016
    A connection to an RV presents many more feet of 3 conductor wire as compared to a normal appliance. The more feet of wire the more capacitance between the conductors. This capacitance will conduct AC current between Hot and Ground, sometimes enough to trip GFIs which is about, I believe, 6 milliamps.

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