To preface this, I work for a small start-up in the Agriculture field. We have a product which uses high voltage (30kv) corona wires to ionize exhaust air in animal facilities for odor and dust reduction. We have been having a very difficult time with GFCI outlets at one client's sites. It appears that our system trips the GFCI outlets (used because the outlets are mounted outside).
Note - I cannot replicate this in our warehouse yet. With 15A or 20A GFCI outlets (client uses 15A) I cannot get our system to trip the outlet.
I traveled to the client site the other day to see this for myself. The GFCI outlets trip at erratic intervals (once as quickly as 10min, another time it took 1.5hrs before it tripped). I checked the wiring on the outlet, it appears to be correct, nothing is downstream of that outlet. I plugged a hot air soldering station in to the outlet (draw of about 2A) and let it run for 1.5-2hrs and it did not trip the outlet. I systematically replaced all the parts on our power supply, and at each point the GFCI would eventually trip.
This occurs whether our power supply is connected to the high voltage wiring (which runs to about 200ft of exposed "corona wire").
The system itself essentially converts the AC to DC, steps it up to 30kv, then converts it back to AC before running it to the plate where it will connect with the HV wire (if the HV wire is connected).
We are really puzzled, and the worst part is the client has some sites (approximately 50%) which have the GFCI outlets and which are not experiencing this fault. They have even told me they have a site with one outlet which trips, and another which does not when plugged into our system.
The inconsistency, and the very erratic "lag" in the effect is making testing this difficult. I'd appreciate any thoughts people with more experience in this field may have.
Note - I cannot replicate this in our warehouse yet. With 15A or 20A GFCI outlets (client uses 15A) I cannot get our system to trip the outlet.
I traveled to the client site the other day to see this for myself. The GFCI outlets trip at erratic intervals (once as quickly as 10min, another time it took 1.5hrs before it tripped). I checked the wiring on the outlet, it appears to be correct, nothing is downstream of that outlet. I plugged a hot air soldering station in to the outlet (draw of about 2A) and let it run for 1.5-2hrs and it did not trip the outlet. I systematically replaced all the parts on our power supply, and at each point the GFCI would eventually trip.
This occurs whether our power supply is connected to the high voltage wiring (which runs to about 200ft of exposed "corona wire").
The system itself essentially converts the AC to DC, steps it up to 30kv, then converts it back to AC before running it to the plate where it will connect with the HV wire (if the HV wire is connected).
We are really puzzled, and the worst part is the client has some sites (approximately 50%) which have the GFCI outlets and which are not experiencing this fault. They have even told me they have a site with one outlet which trips, and another which does not when plugged into our system.
The inconsistency, and the very erratic "lag" in the effect is making testing this difficult. I'd appreciate any thoughts people with more experience in this field may have.
- TL;DR
- GFCI appears to be tripped by our admittedly odd system. We are perplexed as to why, however.