Electric Fence Causing Earth Leakage Trip

[spotity]

Hi All, 

So I have a weird new issue - yesterday a branch fell onto my electric fence at my front gate which caused one of the wires to move from the bobbin, causing a short to the stay. The fence remained on, however my earth leakage tripped in the main DB and continued to trip. 

I only figured out later that it was the fence that was causing the trip. The only way I can see this happening is through the gate DB board (which is plastic). The gate DB has 3 breakers - 1x 32 A main breaker, 1x16A gate breaker and 1x16A breaker for the wall lights. The conduit does run along side the electric fence, although its plastic. 

Any ideas? 

 

 

[Kalahari Meerkat]

and the stay is grounded? at earth potential?

[TaliaB]

On 2023/10/24 at 8:01 AM, spotity said:

Hi All, 

So I have a weird new issue - yesterday a branch fell onto my electric fence at my front gate which caused one of the wires to move from the bobbin, causing a short to the stay. The fence remained on, however my earth leakage tripped in the main DB and continued to trip. 

I only figured out later that it was the fence that was causing the trip. The only way I can see this happening is through the gate DB board (which is plastic). The gate DB has 3 breakers - 1x 32 A main breaker, 1x16A gate breaker and 1x16A breaker for the wall lights. The conduit does run along side the electric fence, although its plastic. 

Any ideas? 

 

 

This should be a step by step approach and nothing taken for granted. Disconnect the mains input from the energizer then try and reset the earth leakage. You need to Disconnect the live and neutral from the energizer not just switching off the mcb that feeds the energizer. If the earth leakage resets then the energizer is not the culprit. Same recipe above for the gate motor and then the lights. If the sub db(gate) main breaker is a double pole ( isolator) disconnecting L and N you can isolate it there without disconnecting wires and then check if earth leakage will reset. 

[spotity]

1 hour ago, TaliaB said:

This should be a step by step approach and nothing taken for granted. Disconnect the mains input from the energizer then try and reset the earth leakage. You need to Disconnect the live and neutral from the energizer not just switching off the mcb that feeds the energizer. If the earth leakage resets then the energizer is not the culprit. Same recipe above for the gate motor and then the lights. If the sub db(gate) main breaker is a double pole ( isolator) disconnecting L and N you can isolate it there without disconnecting wires and then check if earth leakage will reset. 

If I turn off the fence, the tripping stops, so it is the fence, I could hear it shorting to the stay. Thought it was potentially one of the wall lights has a neutral that was touching either the wall, or the mounting point - which was getting a little current back and causing the earth leakage to trip. Hard to determine though. There are a lot of lights and they are daisy-chained along the wall. 

[Scorp007]

3 hours ago, TaliaB said:

You need to Disconnect the live and neutral from the energizer not just switching off the mcb that feeds the energizer. If the earth leakage resets then the energizer is not the culprit. 

I belief if the E/L resets and does not trip after the above disconnection(out of circuit) the  fault Is on the energizer and fence circuits. 

[TaliaB]

6 minutes ago, Scorp007 said:

I belief if the E/L resets and does not trip after the above disconnection(out of circuit) the  fault Is on the energizer and fence circuits. 

Yes the op said after turning the fence off the EL would reset, fence curcuit is the culprit.

[Scorp007]

2 minutes ago, TaliaB said:

Yes the op said after turning the fence off the EL would reset, fence curcuit is the culprit.

Good I was still getting there and busy reading all the posts.