When I have seen this, there has been a wiring problem, usually a bad ground.  
Sometimes also bad stuff like tingling when you touch the electrical boxes.  
Telling the site owner to get an electrician in to fix the wiring has always 
resolved the problem.  That would be my first approach, it is a serious problem 
with the electrical wiring that needs to be fixed.  Otherwise, there is a 
safety issue.  Not just for your equipment, but for personnel.

 

You could have a unique situation if this is a farm, grain elevator, etc. with 
long runs to the ground and neutral, transformers converting from 480 3-phase, 
etc.

 

Worst case you could put in a 1:1 isolation transformer and your own ground, 
but first choice is to get the wiring fixed.

 

 

From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Chuck McCown
Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2017 10:38 AM
To: af@afmug.com
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] APC Site Wiring Fault

 

But they run back to two different bars.  The neutral bar and the ground bar.  
Then normally those two are bonded and the ground bar goes to the building 
entrance ground rod.  Any bad connection coupled with decent amount of current 
causes voltage differences.  

 

From: That One Guy /sarcasm 

Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2017 9:35 AM

To: af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com>  

Subject: Re: [AFMUG] APC Site Wiring Fault

 

I never understood how there can be a difference between the two in most of our 
scenarios we are on a dedicated breaker. the ground and neutral terminate to 
the same place usually on 12/2wg or 10/2wg and the only thing on the circuit is 
our APC. the insulated neutral and the copper ground are the same wire in romex 
arent they? just one has insulation?

 

On Thu, Feb 16, 2017 at 10:19 AM, Nate Burke <n...@blastcomm.com 
<mailto:n...@blastcomm.com> > wrote:

I think I read the error occurs if there is >5v difference between neutral and 
ground.  The Strange thing is that it's happening at the same time every day. 

On 2/16/2017 10:13 AM, That One Guy /sarcasm wrote:

good luck. APC has a little guide for troubleshooting them, but never much 
detail. we have a couple sites that always have it, never had any impact. I 
suspect its overloaded ground. Maybe the smart meter shunts voltage to ground 
for some safety verification or something like that, or more likely to identify 
utility theft since all those smart meters are about is profit

 

On Thu, Feb 16, 2017 at 10:08 AM, Nate Burke <n...@blastcomm.com 
<mailto:n...@blastcomm.com> > wrote:

I have a UPS that I recently installed pulling a 'Site Wiring Fault' for 20 
seconds a few times a day, at the exact same time daily. There are no other 
local electrical device at the location that I can find turning on or off at 
the same time, or that would have this kind of regularity.

There is a smart meter at the location, could the smart meter be doing some 
polling that would cause this?  I have another Identical UPS off the same 
utility HV line, but different transformer and meter, and it does not have any 
errors.

Has anyone seen these before and been able to track down a cause? On the APC 
forums, one reply was to simply disable the alert, saying otherwise you'll 
descend down a never ending rabbit hole of diagnosing and tweaking your 
electrical plant.

Nate





 

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If you only see yourself as part of the team but you don't see your team as 
part of yourself you have already failed as part of the team.

 





 

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If you only see yourself as part of the team but you don't see your team as 
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