Reviving this thread from the old site:
Victron - how about a solution?
4mA RCCB’s are the root of this problem. The standard used to be 40mA - which the Multis were designed for.
I think your only solution for this would be an isolating transformer.
https://www.beama.org.uk/resourceLibrary/the-rcd-handbook---guide-to-the-selection-and-application-of-residual-current-devices.html
Page 22, note 2:-
10 mA RCDs are associated with highly sensitive equipment and high risk areas such as school laboratories
and in hospital areas.
Thus using 4mA RCD’s in an RV park is an incorrect application of these devices…
The problem in many cases is an accumulation of capacitive leakage which is a function of modern EMI filters and other devices which have capacitive leakage currents. They reduce the trip margin and can sometimes cause nuisance tripping. I am surprised by the low trip margin some people are speaking of.
In houses the load can be spread across several circuits but in the marine environment often a boat is plugged into one dock outlet. In this case the capacitive leakage cannot be segregated. We sometimes use a device that produces an equal and opposite phase angle to the capacitive leakage. It produces an inductive phase angle without a physical inductor as it uses an “electronic inductor”. It does not reduce the safety margin at all of the GFCI and works in a similar way to capacitive power factor correction for inductive loads. Instead of using capacitors to correct lagging power factor (inductive loads) it uses an “electronic inductor” to reduce capacitive leading power factor currents. The nuisance trip currents are usually capacitive.
If you want to nullify the effect of the capacitive current in your ground cable you may consider one of these. B-Stop installation - B-Stop. You can preset the device to null out either 5 or 10mA of leakage current.
They are produced in Italy and the inventor is quite brilliant. It is an elegant engineering solution to a difficult problem and the beauty is in the apparent simplicity of the solution that required innovative lateral thinking to resolve.
I realise it sounds like snake oil so I have written an engineering explanatory paper to outline the principal of operation of this device if anyone is suffering from severe insomnia and is at all interested.
1 Like