Grow light tripping a breaker on a different circuit?

OG_NoMan · Apr 5, 2019

WTF spent 4 hours to come to this conclusion and am very annoyed :wallbash:

So turned on my 400 watt mh/hps electronic ballast with a mh bulb, wife comes in the grow room a while later says the lights are out in her office area. All brand new electrical fully up to code afci/gfci breakers 3 20 amp circuits in the grow and the lights for the office area on a different circuit that is afci/gfci breaker protected. The grow rooms are only gfci because afci is too finicky and cant afford the breaker popping for no reason. On to today, I call my electrician and he tells me I have to check all recepticles for loose connections and so on. I spent 3 hours checking individual recepticles and switches and to no avail it still popped. Turn the grow light off and the afci/gfci breaker hasnt popped since. From the research I have quickly done seems its from RF affecting the breaker. Gonna have to come up with a solution to the problem any and all help welcome. Cheaper the better :biggrin:

thanks all :comfort:

bsgospel · Apr 5, 2019

Damn dude, sorry to hear about the headache.

Recently a hot panel severed the connection between the breakers and their timers at my place. I check the timers every day (they were fine) but everything started re vegging. Turns out the lights were on for ten days and I had to use a camera to catch it.

I think your RF theory is the best bet. Perhaps more capacitance or thicker wires would help. Is your new 3 20 amp a load or primary?

OG_NoMan · Apr 5, 2019

bsgospel said:
Damn dude, sorry to hear about the headache.

Recently a hot panel severed the connection between the breakers and their timers at my place. I check the timers every day (they were fine) but everything started re vegging. Turns out the lights were on for ten days and I had to use a camera to catch it.

I think your RF theory is the best bet. Perhaps more capacitance or thicker wires would help. Is your new 3 20 amp a load or primary?

I don't know what load or primary is. The grow room has 3 20 amp circuits on regular breakers. 1 circuit for veg, 1 circuit for flower room, 1 circuit for misc. Dehumidifier. All circuits were run using 12-2 which is the correct guage wire for a 20 amp circuit. The circuit that is tripping when my 400 mh is on is a completely different circuit that has a afci/gfci breaker. It really makes no sense other than it must be RF interference messing with the afci breaker. But to make it even more of a head scratcher there are 3 more afci/gfci breakers in the panel and they don't pop.

Switcher56 · Apr 5, 2019

Have you considered changing the popping breaker?

OG_NoMan · Apr 5, 2019

Switcher56 said:
Have you considered changing the popping breaker?

I have and most likely will but I need an electrician to do it as I am not comfortable working in the panel. Gotta wait till my brother inlaw comes over for a visit he is licensed electrician. I was trying to see if this has happened to anyone else as it is purely grow related. I am gonna test my CMH today to see if this does it also. Thanks for the replies :biggrin:

Pro Headies · Apr 5, 2019

In your breaker box check that the white wires for the newly installed breakers aren't touching anything at the neutral bus bar. Maybe pop the new 20 amp breakers out of panel and move them to another open spot. There only things i can think of. It's got to be something at panel i think since it's where the grow breakers and office breaker "cross paths".

OG_NoMan · Apr 5, 2019

Pro Headies said:
In your breaker box check that the white wires for the newly installed breakers aren't touching anything at the neutral bus bar. Maybe pop the new 20 amp breakers out of panel and move them to another open spot. There only things i can think of. It's got to be something at panel i think since it's where the grow breakers and office breaker "cross paths".

So the breakers were installed new 3 years ago when I built the grow area, so everything has been working for that long. The office circuit was installed a year and a half ago and has worked fine. Also the grow breakers are in my main panel and the office circuit is in a subpanel next to the main panel. It really makes no sense. One thing I did notice is that my 400 hums a bit louder than my 600. All ballasts are fairly new.

Bud Green · Apr 5, 2019

Sounds to me like somewhere, either in the breaker panel or in the wall, there is a short, connecting the two separate circuits.

In other words, wires from the two separate circuits are touching each other somewhere.

OG_NoMan · Apr 5, 2019

Bud Green said:
Sounds to me like somewhere, either in the breaker panel or in the wall, there is a short, connecting the two separate circuits.

In other words, wires from the two separate circuits are touching each other somewhere.

Thats an impossibility as the office area is opposite side of the house as the grow and are in different panels, so wires are no where near each other. I checked all connections in every box for loose connections, the only time it will pop is when the 400 is on. Also the circuit that had the 400 on it is in use as we speak and has been in use for the last 3 years with no problems.

Pro Headies · Apr 5, 2019

did you try moving the 400 ballast to another circuit to see if anything weird happens?

besides the office what else is running through the sub panel box? possibly the breaker for the sub panel in the main breaker box has a loose red or black wire at breaker?

electrical gremlins suck when there not easily found, good luck man!

Hydro8 · Apr 5, 2019

So far it sounds as if your 400wat ballast is the most likely culprit.

I would get an extension cord and try another breaker to narrow it down to breaker or equipment on breaker.

Switcher56 · Apr 5, 2019

Troubleshooting is never easy. If your 600 was running on that circuit before without issues, pop your 600 on it and see what happens, as 600 draws more current than a 400.. If all is well. It's the light. What is wrong with the light. God only knows.

OG_NoMan · Apr 5, 2019

So I tried the 400 again a while ago with a heavier guage power cord. The one that came with the ballast is probably 14 guage so I used the one that came with my cmh thats thicker. Popped the breaker. Switched out the 400 setup with my 315 cmh setup bam no problems, been running at least a half hour now. I did notice that there is no hum that comes from the 315 balast, slight hum from my 600 hps, a lot of hum from the 400. I have to conclude the 400 is fucked because of rf interference. The frustrating part is that I don't know why.

Switcher56 · Apr 5, 2019

OG_NoMan said:
So I tried the 400 again a while ago with a heavier guage power cord. The one that came with the ballast is probably 14 guage so I used the one that came with my cmh thats thicker. Popped the breaker. Switched out the 400 setup with my 315 cmh setup bam no problems, been running at least a half hour now. I did notice that there is no hum that comes from the 315 balast, slight hum from my 600 hps, a lot of hum from the 400. I have to conclude the 400 is fucked because of rf interference. The frustrating part is that I don't know why.

Good news (perhaps) is that now at least we have it isolated to the light

(fingers crossed) How old is the light? Ballast might be gone or has deteriorated sufficiently to cause unnecessary resistance. My advice is to discontinue the use of your 400 until you have remedied the problem and, now that it is isolated, perhaps folks can chime in more/better recommendations.

MJPassion · Apr 5, 2019

Is the 400 a digi or mag ballast.

If it's digi it may be done fer. If it's a transformer ballast you may be able to repair it with a new capacitor & igniter. If you're not comfortable maybe your brother can help you with the repair.

OG_NoMan · Apr 5, 2019

MJPassion said:
Is the 400 a digi or mag ballast.

If it's digi it may be done fer. If it's a transformer ballast you may be able to repair it with a new capacitor & igniter. If you're not comfortable maybe your brother can help you with the repair.

Its digital and only used a few times in the last 3 years. Gonna have to start looking for led for veg I guess. Thanks everyone for all the help. :tiphat:

caliprop215 · Apr 5, 2019

What else is plugged into the same breaker. ? Put the 600 watt in see if it works. If it pops u have to many thing running in the 1 breaker.and ur at max watts and amps for the 20 amp breaker...that's y I could be popping.

What else u have running?. Fans? Is the fridge or heater hooked up to the same breaker.if so those draw alot of energy and wo t let u run any thing else. When the breaker pops how many rooms go out?

OG_NoMan · Apr 5, 2019

caliprop215 said:
What else is plugged into the same breaker. ? Put the 600 watt in see if it works. If it pops u have to many thing running in the 1 breaker.and ur at max watts and amps for the 20 amp breaker...that's y I could be popping.

What else u have running?. Fans? Is the fridge or heater hooked up to the same breaker.if so those draw alot of energy and wo t let u run any thing else. When the breaker pops how many rooms go out?

Its definitely not an over loaded circuit. The circuits in the grow are 20 amp home runs and there is only about 6 amps being used. When I wired the rooms I took all of my consumption into account. I think the ballast is not shielded well enough and the afci breaker that keeps popping is just really sensitive. At this point I would rather ditch the 400 due to the amount of RF unless I can figure out how to get rid of it.

PurplePotion · Apr 6, 2019

Learning all about RF myself. Search faraday cage. You essentially build a conductive cage with an insulator in between your ballasts and ground that cage to somewhere entirely separate from your existing ground.

Also search Nanolux RF Filter set on google. Will be trying these as soon as they arrive.

I have also noticed the 315w cmh is very quiet.

Search square wave ballasts and magnetic ballasts. They both operate at much lower frequencies (I think 120hz) so the RF interefecence isn’t anything like the standard digital sine wave ballasts (120,000Hz).

Ground loops can amplify Rf noise (just something to check). Also unhooked cable wires, etc that are still hooked up/grounded at the box. Unhook them and cap at box.

For a test I wrapped my entire 315cmh and power cable in Aluminum foil (and positioned a fan on it to keep it from over heating), and the RF noise is way lower.. so yea, the crazy stupid stuff you’d never think would work actually does lol.

Use AM radio to test. Turn on and walk close to your ballast, turn on ballast and I’ll let the radio do the rest of the talkin. Crude way of measuring (you can at least get an idea if your shielding/noise reduction is working).

Not saying any of this is actually what’s causing your problem but I wouldn’t disagree with your hypothesis whatsoever. Some of these freaking ballasts are insanely noisy.. beyond my wildest imagination.

In process of more experimenta this weekend, will report. Good luck and please let us know how it goes.

prune · Apr 6, 2019

I had something similar way back and traced it to an individual bulb. Seems the bulb was shorting internally periodically and causing a surge that affected sensitive circuits elsewhere.

Grow light tripping a breaker on a different circuit?

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