Hi guys, hope there will be somebody with an idea how to solve that.

Have Victron solar installation that worked fine until a security camera (Nest IQ outdoor security camera) with infrared LEDs was installed (only a plug goes in wall power socket). No problems during the day, but earth leakage tripping at night when the cameras infrared LEDs are on. Earth leakage not tripping at night when the system is switched over to grid, only tripping when on solar. 

Any idea how to keep the camera going and the solar?

Thanks. 

An RCD (earth leakage) works on a difference in current. If 1A is going in on the live wire, 1A has to come back on the neutral wire. A small mismatch is allowed, usually around 15mA (your typical 30mA RCD starts to trip somewhere between 15mA an 20mA).

The trouble is that many RCDs don't distinguish between a transient leakage (small sharp spike in energy that dissipates in microseconds) and a real sustained leakage. And this causes nuisance tripping.

Furthermore, many appliances have a small leakage (by design), often because there are filtering components that pass a small amount of current to ground. For example, many computer power supplies have a small amount of leakage, which is why large amounts of computers on the same RCD can lead to nuisance tripping. Ask anyone who's run a university lab full of computers.

So the first thing to figure out is what kind of leakage you are dealing with, and the only way I have found to do that is a clamp meter around the conductors. It is possible that you have a standing leakage that is close to the tripping limit, and that other factors push you over at night.

Why only on inverter? Well, because inverters usually don't make a perfect sine wave. They get close, but there is a bit of harmonic distortion in it. Maybe this is acting up in some of the filters.

Here, for example, is the standing loss I had before I split things up a bit. Almost 7mA.

17 hours ago, solarnovice said:

Any idea how to keep the camera going and the solar?

After the house earthing was sorted - whole other story - I still had a tripping issues.

After removing all surge protector plugs installed all over the house, that solved the last nuisance tripping.

 

Thank you plonkster, will try that.

On 2019/05/13 at 8:29 AM, The Terrible Triplett said:

After removing all surge protector plugs installed all over the house, that solved the last nuisance tripping

Had the same story.

Somehow one misses that the indicator lights are off...

I am a “bit” more observant now. 🙂