I finally figured out why my panels kept going into trouble on commercial jobs

Was on a site in Austin last month with a DSC panel that kept showing random trouble alerts every few days. Turned out the building's backup generator was putting out dirty power during tests, and the panel's transformer was picking up the noise on the AC line. Ran a dedicated circuit from a clean breaker and it's been solid for 3 weeks now. Anyone else run into power quality issues on larger sites?

2 comments

2 Comments

evan_harris1412d ago

Ever notice how everything runs on electricity but nobody thinks about what's actually in that electricity? It's like putting premium gas in a lawnmower and wondering why it sputters. I've seen the same thing with cheap UPS units at home - they'll beep and reset clocks for no reason, but swap to a clean outlet and suddenly they work fine. The whole "dirty power" thing is one of those problems that sounds made up until you've had to chase it for three weeks.

cora_martinez12d ago

My buddy Dave spent two weekends trying to figure out why his home server kept crashing, swapped power strips and cables like four times. Turns out his neighbor's old fridge compressor was dumping junk into the line, and a simple filter strip fixed the whole thing in five minutes. He swore it sounded like an urban legend until he plugged that thing in and watched the uptime counter climb past a week for the first time.