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Earth Leakage Nuisance Tripping - What to

Do?
Published on August 21, 2017

Steve KellyFollow
Team Lead CKD Production at BMW South Africa
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For many years, since we moved into our home, the Earth Leakage Circuit Breaker
(ELCB) would trip for no apparent reason. Often, it was difficult to reset the ELCB
after the trip.
A few years ago, I replaced the original Distribution Board (DB) with a more modern
version. Unfortunately this did not help. It made the problem worse, as the new ELCB
was more sensitive than the old one.

I looked for earth leakage faults in all the obvious places, e.g. outside lights,
appliances, etc., without any success.

I consulted the online resources listed below. The experts convinced me that, in most
cases, these nuisance tripping problems can be traced to wiring faults.

Eventually, with patience, perseverance, and a bit of good luck, I was able to identify
the cable faults that were causing the problem.

I was relieved to be able to fix these cable faults without rewiring the house!

The objective of this article is to reassure others, who are experiencing similar issues,
that these problems can be fixed. The purpose and operation of Earth Leakage
Protection is described in the context of a typical home Distribution Board (DB).

Some basic techniques are described that can be used to trace the wiring faults using
only basic tools.

CAUTION: Do not try this yourself at home! With hindsight, my trial-and-error

approach takes too long. The job can be done more effectively and safely by a
professional with the right skills and equipment. In South Africa, by law, a registered
electrician is responsible for the wiring of any new installation, including the
Distribution Board. Before making any changes to your electrical installation, you
should check if you are legally allowed to do so.

With an existing installation, finding a good electrical contractor with the necessary
skills, equipment and attitude could be a challenge! Therefore, I have included some
suggestions about choosing a suitable electrical contractor.

Safety First

Electricity is dangerous and should always be treated with respect. If you are tempted
to try doing your own electrical work at home, please accept that you do so at your
own risk.

The risks are significant, as illustrated below.

“Do your own electrical work” from the original “Dumb Ways to Die” video sequence:
Images courtesy Metro Melbourne.

Of course, if your house burns down, your insurers won’t pay.

Worse still, you could end up like this guy:

Here rests

PANCRAZIO

JUVENALES

1968-1993

He was a good husband,

a wonderful father, but

a bad home electrician

History

The world’s first high sensitivity earth leakage protection system was developed in South Africa
by Henri Rubin [2]. Rubin was an engineer at C.J. Fuchs Electrical Industries, a company in
Alberton, near Johannesburg. In 1955 he developed a system known as the magamp, initially for
use in South Africa’s gold mines. The original device operated at 525 V and had a tripping
sensitivity of 250 mA.

In 1956, Rubin produced a new magamp device rated at 220 V, 60A with a tripping sensitivity of
12.5 - 17.5 mA. Following the accidental electrocution of a woman in a domestic accident at the
Stilfontein gold mining village near Johannesburg, a few hundred of the 20mA magamp earth
leakage protection units were installed in the homes of the mining village in 1957 and 1958.

In the 1960’s, earth leakage protection was mandated in residential environments in the US and
Canada, and subsequently in the following countries, among others: South Africa (1974),
Australia (1991), UK (2002), and New Zealand (2003).

Most countries have adopted the 30mA standard. According to research, in the case of electric
shock, the breaker should trip before the average human will go into cardiac arrest.

Earthing

Earthing is important for safety and functional reasons. If an installation is not properly earthed,
your appliances could float anywhere between 0 and 220 V AC. In which case, you could get an
electric shock when you touch the outside of an appliance.

The earth also provides a safe path for surges and spikes in the power supply, including those
caused by lightning strikes. The presence of an earth electrode or earth spike nearby the
equipment to be protected, is the best form of protection against lightning strikes.

In a typical domestic installation, an earth electrode, on its own, is not sufficient for safe and
reliable earthing. This is because an earth electrode is considered “high impedance”, in other
words, it is not a good electrical connection. Therefore the earth on the Distribution Board is
usually connected to the Protective Earth (PE) from the source utility, e.g. City Power, via the
Earthing Continuity Conductor.
Despite its obvious importance, it is distressing to see how often earthing is disregarded in
installations. Perhaps because the installation still works with only a Live and a Neutral, despite
the inherent safety and reliability considerations.

Earth Leakage Circuit Breaker (ELCB) – What is it and how does it work?

Note that an ELCB is also referred to as a Residual Current Device (RCD) in the UK, and a
Ground Fault Interrupter (GFI) in the US. Refer to the diagram below.
Photo Courtesy CBI Industries

Courtesy Marc’s Technical Pages

This device is usually made with the Live and Neutral fed together through a common core. On
the same core is wound a secondary that feeds a small electromagnet that, when powered, will
cause the breaker to trip. In a perfect world, the current flowing out on the Live should be
returned on the Neutral, therefore the magnetism inside the core is cancelled and nothing appears
on the secondary.

Sadly, we don’t live in a perfect world. Leakage currents do exist; these currents use undefined
paths on their way out of and return to the source. With the current being unequal, the
uncancelled magnetism permeates the core, feeding the secondary and the electromagnet, and
causing the breaker to trip.

Since it is not connected to earth, this ingenious device does not detect actual leakage to earth.
Instead, the residual current caused by the uncancelled magnetism in the core is deemed to be
earth leakage current. This subtle difference can be significant when explaining why the ELCB is
tripping.

Defining Nuisance Tripping

Nuisance trips are clearly defined as unwarranted circuit breaker trips with either no electrically
based reason for the trips, or, the breaker deems there to be a fault when one does not exist. [3]

Nuisance tripping is not the tripping of a breaker when doing its designed function. [3]

In defence of earth leakage protection, this definition specifically excludes trips caused by
electrical faults. Marc explains in detail how nuisance trips can be caused, for example, by
modern appliances and power disturbances.

Assuming you do not have any electrical faults in your installation, you could still experience
nuisance tripping, for example, due to lightning strikes. I have not experienced any specific
tripping problems with modern appliances. These appliances would be easy to isolate (see
Troubleshooting below).

My own tripping problems were caused by a cable fault, and the ELCB was doing exactly the
function it was designed for.

Similarly, if water gets into a socket outlet, the ELCB may trip. This is a fault condition.

Be reasonable. There is no point in blaming the device when the problem lies elsewhere.

How would you know if a fault exists?

In my case, operating the microwave oven would usually trip the ELCB. This was frequent and
intermittent. The worst kind of fault to find.

Fortunately, references [1] and [3] described exactly this behaviour, as a result of a cable fault.

Distribution Board

A typical Distribution Board (DB) is illustrated below.

Note the earth electrode and Earthing Continuity Conductor referred to earlier.

The incoming Live and Neutral are connected to the Main Switch.

From the Main Switch, the circuits with Earth Leakage Protection (ELP) are connected via the
Earth Leakage Circuit Breaker (ELCB) to the Live Busbar (ELP) and Neutral Busbar (ELP).

From the Main Switch, the circuits without Earth Leakage Protection (No ELP) are connected
directly to the Live Busbar (No ELP) and Neutral Busbar (No ELP).
In the example above:

• The first four circuits, i.e. Circuit Breakers CB1, CB2, CB3 and CB4 and their
corresponding loads Load 1, Load 2, Load 3 and Load 4, have Earth Leakage Protection.
• The last three circuits, i.e. Circuit Breakers CB5, CB6 and CB7 and their corresponding
loads Load 5, Load 6 and Load 7, do not have Earth Leakage Protection.

In South Africa, according to SANS 10142 [4], earth leakage protection is mandatory only for
socket outlets. See examples of different types of circuits (loads) below:

• Socket Outlets: ELP Mandatory

• Lights (luminaires): ELP Optional
• Geyser: ELP Optional
• Stove: Fixed: ELP Optional. On Socket Outlet: ELP Mandatory
• Fixed Appliance, e.g. Air Conditioner: ELP Optional

Tools

You can test your ELCB with an Earth Leakage Tester, like the one illustrated below. You can
buy these instruments from your local electrical supplier for about R400.
Earth Leakage Tester

Courtesy of Major Tech

This device allows you to test your ELCB by generating an earth leakage current between 10mA
and 35mA through a socket outlet. It also checks the polarity and continuity of the Live, Neutral
and Earth conductors.

These are very basic checks. If your ELCB trips at 25mA or 30mA, and the instrument doesn’t
indicate any faults, you should be smiling.
However, you may find that the ELCB trips, for example, at 10mA. Since it is designed to trip at
30mA, this would suggest there may be a leakage current of 20mA coming from a faulty circuit
elsewhere, not necessarily from a socket outlet. Note: it is the total leakage current that causes
the trip.

Troubleshooting

Here are some basic troubleshooting techniques, using only basic tools like the multimeter
below.

Once the faulty circuit is isolated, the nuisance tripping will stop, and the faulty circuit can be
repaired.

Multimeter

Courtesy of Fluke
First, try to isolate individual appliances, by disconnecting any faulty appliances.

Next, try to isolate individual circuits by means of their Circuit Breakers (CB1, CB2, CB3 and
CB4 in the schematic above). Note: the Circuit Breaker only disconnects the Live side of the
circuit.

If the fault cannot be isolated by disconnecting the appliances and the Circuit Breakers, as
described above, we can assume that the fault is on the Neutral side.

Neutral faults can be difficult to find, because all the Neutrals are connected together on a
common Neutral Busbar, as illustrated above. It is also possible that the Neutrals of different
circuits can be connected together, or cross-wired, in the wiring of the house. As mentioned
earlier, the current that flows from the Circuit Breaker to the Load should always return via the
same path to the ELP Neutral Bar. If the Neutrals are cross-wired or wired to the wrong Neutral
Bar, the current will find the most direct route back, and the ELCB will trip.

If the fault is on the Neutral side, you will need to proceed with caution. The objective
now is to isolate the faulty circuit by physically disconnecting both the Live and the
Neutral in the Distribution Board (DB). Note: The Live is on a Circuit Breaker. The
Neutral must be physically disconnected from the Neutral Busbar.

Before you can isolate the fault, you will need to be familiar with all the circuits, Circuit
Breakers and Loads in your installation, as the fault could be in any of these. Proceed as follows:

1. Identify all Circuits and Loads. Label all Circuit Breakers on the outside of the DB.
Masking tape is easy to write on, for example:

• CB3 - Outbuildings
• CB4 - Stove
• CB5 - Geyser
• CB6 - Motorgate
• CB7 - Socket Outlets – Lounge and Bedrooms
• CB8 - Socket Outlets – Dining Room
• CB9 - Socket Outlets - Kitchen
• CB10 - Lights – Inside
• CB11 - Lights – Kitchen and Dining Room
• CB12 - Lights – Outside
2. Identify the Live and Neutral cables for each circuit. Inside the DB, label all cables with
the corresponding circuit number, e.g. 3 for Outbuildings, 4 for Stove, etc. The Live cables are
easy to identify. They are usually red, and are connected directly to the corresponding Circuit
Breaker, e.g. CB3, CB4, etc.

Neutrals are usually black, and are connected to a common Neutral Busbar. The following
technique can be use to identify the corresponding circuits of the individual Neutral cables. This
method depends on there being an active load on each circuit when you test it. For example, if
there is nothing plugged into any of the dining room sockets, you will not be able to detect the
neutral wire of the “CB8 – Socket Outlets – Dining Room” circuit at the distribution board using
this method. So, make sure that you have a suitable load connected; for example, plug a table
lamp into one of the dining room sockets, and make sure that it is switched on! This method also
depends on the fact that the impedance of this load at 50 Hz will be much smaller than the
impedance of the multimeter when measuring VAC. With certain modern electronic appliances,
this may not be the case and you may not get a clear measurement.

You Will Need:

• A multimeter, which must be set to read AC voltage, in a range that includes 230 VAC.
Your meter probes must be suitably insulated for such measurements, and you must
always exercise care not to touch anything that could be “live” with your bare hands
when measuring mains voltages. This includes neutral wires;
• A means to insulate the exposed ends of multiple disconnected neutral wires at the same
time, for example a collection of “Screwit” ceramic insulating caps. Or many small
pieces of insulation tape.

Caution

Proceed with caution as follows:

1. Isolate the DB by switching off the Main Switch and ELCB(s). Also switch off all the
individual load Circuit Breakers.

2. Identify the No ELP Neutral Busbar by visually tracing the wire from the Neutral Out
terminal of the Main Switch to the Busbar. Each of the other Neutral wires connected to this
Busbar will correspond to a No ELP load circuit. Disconnect all of these load Neutral wires from
the Busbar and temporarily insulate their exposed ends.

3. Identify the ELP Neutral Busbar by visually tracing the wire from the Neutral Out terminal
of the ELCB to the Busbar. Each of the other Neutral wires connected to this Busbar will
correspond to an Earth Leakage Protected load circuit. Disconnect all of these load Neutral wires
and temporarily insulate their exposed ends.

4. Bring up the Main Switch, and start identifying the No ELP circuit Neutral wires, one at a
time, by bringing up its corresponding Circuit Breaker. For example, from the wiring diagram
above, switch on CB5 to energise Load 5 and find its Neutral wire(s).
5. To find the corresponding Neutral wire(s), measure the AC voltage between the No ELP
Neutral Busbar (which is still connected to the Main Switch and is thus On) and the
exposed end of each of the disconnected load Neutral wires in turn. Most of these measurements
should give negligible voltage, because the circuits will not be energised. But the Load 5 Neutral
wire should give a voltage reading of 220 VAC, because this circuit is energised via Circuit
Breaker CB5. Label this wire “5”.

6. You should expect each Circuit Breaker to energise only one Neutral wire. However, it is
possible that in the house wiring, there are Neutrals from different circuits connected together.
Therefore it is necessary to check all of the Neutral wires for each load, and to label all wires that
are found to be connected to each load. If, for example, the Neutral of Load 5 is connected in
some dark corner of the ceiling to the Neutral of Load 7, then you will end up with two Neutral
wires being labelled both “5” and “7”, and you won’t be able to tell which wire is which.

7. Once you have identified all the Neutral wires associated with CB5, switch off CB5 and
proceed to Load 6 by switching on CB6. Continue in this way until all the No ELP circuit
Neutral wires have been identified.

8. Next, identify the ELP circuit Neutral wires by first bringing up the ELCB, and then
proceeding to enerigise each of its load circuits in turn, in the same way as decribed in steps 4 to
7 above.

9. Note that it is entirely possible that a No ELP circuit Neutral is connected somewhere in the
house to an ELP circuit Neutral. This would constitute a wiring fault, and needs to be corrected
such that both sides of the circuit, i.e. live and neutral, are either ELP, or neither are ELP.

10. Once you have labelled all the Neutral wires, turn off the Main Switch, ELCB and all other
Circuit Breakers, and reconnect all the Neutral wires to their respective Busbars.

Having identified all the Live and Neutral wires for each circuit, you are now able to isolate the
corresponding circuits as follows:

• Where you identified only one Neutral cable per circuit, you can isolate each circuit by
disconnecting the corresponding Live and Neutral.
• However, where you identified common or cross-wired Neutrals, as per the Neutrals “5”
and “7” example above, to isolate this mess, you must you must disconnect all the
corresponding Lives and Neutrals for all the cross-wired circuits. In this case, the Lives
and Neutrals for both CB5 and CB7.

3. Eliminate the circuits that are not faulty. Patience is required here. You can temporarily
disconnect individual circuits, and if the nuisance tripping continues, you can reconnect the
isolated circuit and assume that the fault lies in the other circuits. For example, these circuits
were eliminated because the nuisance tripping continued, even when they were isolated as
follows:
 • CB3 – Outbuildings. I isolated this circuit with the double-pole breaker on the sub-DB, to
be sure that this circuit was not causing the fault.
• CB4 – Stove. This has a double-pole switch to isolate the circuit, to be sure that this
circuit was not causing the fault.
• CB5 – Geyser. This has an electronic controller with a double-pole relay. The geyser is
thus fully isolated when the timing cycle is not active, and cannot be causing the fault,
because nuisance tripping occurred even when the cycle was not active.
• CB7, CB8 and CB9 – Socket Outlets. All appliances were disconnected.

Finally, isolate the faulty circuit by physically disconnecting both the Live and the
Neutral in the Distribution Board (DB). Disconnect the Live from the Circuit Breaker,
and the Neutral from the Neutral Busbar.

What I found

I found two cross-wired Neutrals. The Neutrals for CB10 Inside Lights and CB12 Outside Lights
were connected together. This could be a problem because the circuits were on Earth Leakage
Protection.

I also found that the Motorgate circuit had been added on to the CB12 Outside Lights circuit,
because, no doubt, this was the most convenient connection.

For many years, I suspected the CB10 + CB12 + Motorgate circuit was the problem. I always felt
that these should be three separate circuits. I made the following changes:

1. Moved the Motorgate onto a separate circuit (CB6).

2. Moved CB10 and CB12 off Earth Leakage Protection, which is allowed for lighting
circuits.

With the Motorgate on a separate circuit (CB6), I was able to isolate the fault for the first time.
This is where the luck came in. One Saturday morning, I was reheating pizza in the microwave
oven. The ELCB tripped two or three times in a row. It had been raining the day before, and the
ground was wet. I disconnected the Live and the Neutral of circuit CB6. After that, my pizza
reheated perfectly; the fault was gone!

The fault was in the 60m armoured cable between our house and the Motorgate. The cable is at
least 20 years old and is buried, therefore impossible to inspect. Over the years it had been
damaged by garden spades, etc. I had been hoping I would not have to replace it, but now I had
no choice.

Choosing a Good Electrical Contractor

My own experience with electrical contractors has not been good. When we bought our property,
the contractor who issued the clearance certificate was negligent. He did not check the earthing. I
subsequently found that the installation was not earthed at all.
The last contractor on site had no integrity. It was a small job, so he offered to waive the call-out
fee if I paid him in cash. I wonder what his employer would think about that, if he still has a job?

But who could possibly forget the revelations of the Carte Blance exposé on electrical
contractors? Absolutlely shocking, no pun intended! Read the full report
here: http://www.ee.co.za/article/eca-283-08-carte-blanche-expose-on-electrical-contractors.html

Caveat emptor: let the buyer beware. This principle certainly applies here.

I have to acknowledge the information I got from the SA Forum for Electrical Contractors (see
link [1] below). It kept me going. One of these experts could definitely solve your problem.

If you have no idea where to start, you could always ask your local electrical supplier. They
know the industry and the contractors. We have two really excellent suppliers in our
neighbourhood, namely Davenports in Craighall Park, and Lite-Glo in Randburg. These
suppliers have always given me good service and advice.

If you are still not sure, check the references.

Finally, you could ask the contractor, for example, about the general earthing of the installation,
and what instrument they would use to measure very low leakage currents, i.e. less than 30mA?
Because, as mentioned, special skills and equipment would be required to detect earth leakage
problems.

Conclusion

You should not have to struggle with an unsafe or unreliable power supply at home. Earth
Leakage Protection exists for your safety, but also to protect your appliances. Don’t take short
cuts. Make sure it is installed and working correctly.

Acknowedgement

I would like to thank my brother, Andrew, for editing and proofreading this article.

References

1. Link to the South African Electrical Contracting Industry

Forum: http://www.theforumsa.co.za/forums/showthread.php/21519-Frustrating-intermittent-
earth-fault

2. Link to wiki Residual-current device: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residual-

current_device#History_and_nomenclature

3. Link to Marc’s Technical Pages: http://www.marcspages.co.uk/pq/3342.htm

4. Link to SABS Online Store, Standard SANS 10142-1
2017: https://store.sabs.co.za/catalog/product/view/_ignore_category/1/id/2140452/s/sans-10142-
1-ed-2-00-1/

5. Carte Blance exposé: http://www.ee.co.za/article/eca-283-08-carte-blanche-expose-on-

electrical-contractors.html