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Hey everybody, my name is George and I’m the owner of Argo electrical services and this is podcast number 12 electrical faults, what are they an electrical fault what is it? An electrical fault is an out of the ordinary occurrence in an electrical system or piece of equipment. This happens when an energized current flowing through a circuit is completely or partially interrupted. faults can occur for many different reasons, including equipment failure changes to the conditions in the environment, and human negligence or error. Okay, like we talked about before, electricity works by magnetics, you got a positive charged electron and a negative charged electron and they’re racing around the top of the copper between the copper and the insulation and 180 degrees, boom, boom, boom, boom, zum zum, zum zum All right, and when that fault happens, what happens is all of a sudden, that continuity is no longer continuous. Make sense? Okay. faults can occur for many different reasons, including equipment failure changes in conditions of the environment and human negligence or error. Causes of electrical faults can be improper wiring, insulation that has been damaged or overloaded circuits. transient voltage like lightning strikes, power surges, and voltage fluctuations can also cause an electrical fault. More common faults are open circuit faults, short circuit faults and ground faults. An open circuit fault occurs when there’s a break in the circuit, which prevents the current from flowing through it, like we just talked about breaking a wire. Sometimes electricians double over a piece of wire, and then they’ll straighten it out and make it look like you know, oh, there’s no problem with it. Well, then that wire heats up, it cools down and heats up and expands, it contracts the insulation on it. And eventually at some point, that will be the weakest spot in the copper, it will cause a problem down the road potentially, a short circuit fault occurs when there’s an unintended connection between two points in the circuit, which causes an excessive amount of current to flow. Like I do a lot of work on docks around Lake Lanier, in outside of Gainesville coming Dawsonville, Georgia, okay, and we use direct burial aluminum wire, so we can get a larger size wire, which is less expensive, and we can run it long distances. But sometimes, that insulation on the outside will break down. This can cause a fault in the circuit, whether it’s just an open wire, or it trips a breaker sometimes, if it’s a four wire set of direct burial, like a number eight set, all four of those conductors are enclosed into a single piece of insulation. Well maybe two of the hearts are the hot and the ground wire end up touching each other and it will cause a dead short and it will trip the breaker. So finally, a ground fault occurs when an unintended connection between the electrical circuit and the ground can cause a shock hazard. That’s just what I was speaking to a ballast fault is a fault in which all three phases of a three phase system are shorted to ground or to each other. In this type of fault the system remains balanced and the fault current is limited. A circuit breaker is a device that interrupts the flow of current in a circuit when it detects a fault. It is an essential safety device that helps prevent fire and other hazards. So way back when right you know we went from knob and tube wiring and then they started using fuses. And if you’ve been in the industry very long, you probably have removed an old fuse box screw in fuse box and installed a new panel with breakers. Okay, so you know back in the day, the electrical equipment and the installation and all that was to protect equipment, you know, and at some point you In the 60s or 70s, we decided as a human race, that the human life was very valuable as well. And so that’s when we got greater greater development in overcurrent protection. So not only is the overcurrent protection to protect machinery and equipment, but it’s also for the safety of the personnel that are around it and exposed to it from time to time, when a circuit is interrupted, the flow of the current in the circuit is stopped. This can happen for various reasons and circuit fault, or switch or breaker opening. In in an electric power system, faults can cause significant damage to System equipment and result in power outages. Sometimes, if your substation hits a hits a, you know, a snag or something like that, it can cause 1000s of people to be without power for, you know, hours or even days, power system equipment includes transformers, generators, and other devices that are used to generate, transmit and distribute power. You know, that’s, that’s what a substation does, it’s a transmission station. We have power plants all over the place, they send megawatts all over the place. And then they go to substations and it breaks it down, and it sends it to smaller sets of transformers and smaller substations, and then it comes to transformers outside our business, or our home. And that’s how we have power and in our everyday life, equipment is a device or an apparatus used to generate distributor your last power. This includes generators, transformers, motors, receptacles switches, stuff like that. And electrical system refers to an interconnected electrical component system that works together to perform a specific function systems can be found in a variety of applications, including homes, businesses, and industrial facilities. A ladder ground fault is a type of fault that occurs when one of the conductors in a socket comes in contact with the ground. That means for some reason, a hot wire has been caught, and it touches the grounded circuit or grounding electrode. This can happen due to various reasons, faulty insulation, damaged equipment, or, you know, changes in environmental conditions. Maybe a tree falls down across the the power lines, you know, I make a lot of, you know, do a lot of business with people that trees fall down across the meter bases on houses, and we come back and we replace the service equipment, the service entrance equipment into your home. You know, sometimes it’s real easy fix. Sometimes, depending on how old the house is, you’ll have to replace the meter base to put a, you know, a emergency disconnect right there at the service entrance, along with changing the three wire feeders coming from your meter base to a four wire feeder, which is what currently the code requires. Along with changing out the outdated panels. Maybe it is a fuse box. Maybe it’s just a really old panel, and you need arc fault ground fault circuit interrupter breakers. An open circuit fault occurs when there’s a break in the circuit and it prevents the current from flowing through this.
This can happen due to various reasons including broken wires, faulty switches or damaged damaged composable components. A phase fault occurs when one or more phases of a three phase system comes in contact with each other or with the ground. This can happen due to various reasons including faulty equipment, damaged insulation, or environmental conditions once again. And I would say that even though in a residential setting, we call it single phase electrical because of just the transformers and the way it’s designed, but you have two hot legs. If one of those legs touches the other legs, it is a fault. A short circuit fault occurs when there’s an unintended connection between two points in the circuit, which causes an excessive amount of current to flow. This can happen due to various raising damaged equipment human error, faulty faulty wire During the breakdown of insulation, like we talked about the doubled over wire, okay. Single phase fault is top of fault that occurs in a single phase system. This can happen due to various reasons. Once again environmental conditions change the tree falls down across power lines, the meter base can get ripped off the house, you know, maybe, maybe the wire got bent over and the insulation is is bad now and so now it’s got faulty wiring, and there’s some asymmetric fault is when a faulted phase is shorted to other phases in the ground or the ground. This type of fault creates a balance current flow in the system. System faults refer to any fault that occurs in a system. Various factors including environmental condition changes, equipment failures, and human error can also cause these faults. Once again, my name is George Oh, excuse me, I got a little bit more. A transmission line is a high voltage power line and is used to transmit power from power plants to substations to distribution centers, an unbalanced fault in which the fault current is not evenly distributed among the phases of a three phase system. This type of fault can cause significant damage to the system equipment and result in power outages. It’ll burn up transformers, and switch gear and stuff like that. And you can’t just run down to Home Depot and get a 6000 watt disconnect unsymmetrical fault refer to any fault that creates an unbalanced current flow in the system. Various factors include environmental conditions changing human error, faulty equipment or equipment failure. Electrical malfunctions can occur due to various reasons. Once again, equipment problems, installation is damaged. The conditions in the environment have changed. Malfunction similar to this can cause faults and create safety hazards to personnel all over whether it’s in residential, commercial or industrial settings. short circuits can occur when there are there’s an unintended connection between two points. The circuit which causes an excessive amount of current to flow, short circuits can cause damage to equipment, cause power outages, and also fire hazards. And of course electrocution personnel. overloads occur when the current flowing through the circuit exceeds the rated capacity. This can cause equipment damage, power outages and fire hazards. And, you know, and I shared this in an earlier podcast, it’s just like if you go buy a non metallic wire, what most residential electricians or, you know, most electricians would call Romax which is actually a brand name a 12 two with a ground you know each each conductor in there is rated for 6000 volts, but it will only hold 20 amps. So if they’re you know an excessive amount of current there, it will melt that system. If if the overcurrent device does not tree up, you make the wire the wire becomes a fuse. ground faults can occur when there are unintended connection between the circuit and the ground, which can cause a shock hazard. So I’m going to factors gaming clewd once again, faulty insulation, environmental conditions have changed. Damage equipment can cause these types of ground faults. An open circuit occurs when there’s a break in the circuit which prevents the current from flowing through it. Open circuits can cause equipment failure and power outages. Voltage drop refers to the reduction in voltage that occurs when current flows through a circuit. Various factors including the resistance of the circuit components, and the distance between the power source and the load can cause voltage drops. Arc faults occur when current jumps across an air gap between conductors. This can create a spark or an arc that can cause equipment damage power outages, or and or fire hazards. And this really happens more in industrial settings and then high voltage and by high voltage I mean, you know, over 600 volts or so circuit breakers a device that automatically interrupts the the flow of current in a circuit, and defect detects a fault. Circuit breakers help prevent fires and other hazards by quickly interrupting the flow of current in the event of a fault. electrical hazards are any situation or condition that create a risk or injury, risk of injury or damage various factors once again, damaged insulation, human error, faulty equipment, old equipment can cause all of these hazards. faulty wiring refers to damage frayed or deteriorating wire, faulty wiring can cause faults and create safety hazard for people nearby. So I live in northeast Georgia in Gainesville, Georgia. I’m about 4550 miles northeast of Atlanta. So there are 1000s of homes. Within 10 minutes of my house, they still have old fashioned cloth wiring on the outside feeding the meter base and not encapsulated in any conduit. The breakers in their homes are not arc fault ground fault. These things have been developed for our protection. They are much more delicate than the old fashioned breakers. The code adopted them over 15 years ago for our safety. Once again for our safety. It’s better to be safe than sorry. If you’re interested in these kind of improvements or if you just want to know how to do it for yourself. My name is George Argo, Call me at 770-596-1437 or you can email me at info at Argo electrical.com You can find me at Argo electrical.com And you can just go go at our goal Expo. Thanks and have a great day.
