I recently changed radios from a Kenwood TS-590 to an Icom IC-7300 and suddenly I had a circuit breaker trip quite often. The interesting thing is that it was not the circuit on which I have my radio but another circuit in the house. After a bit of testing, I noticed that keying up on my Icom, even with relatively low power, caused the issue. After even more tests, I noticed that in most cases this happened when keying up on 15m and 17m.
As it turns out, others had these problems all the way back to the year 2013 and ARRL wrote about it in an article from November 2013.
The problems are arc fault circuit breakers from the manufacturer EATON. These breakers try sensing so called arc faults (high voltage discharge between two or more conductors) by basically listening to certain signals on the power lines, signals that are typical for such faults. Unfortunately, emitting RF near a power line can create similar signals in the power line and fool the breaker into believing an arc fault occurred. As a result the breaker trips, shutting down power to the circuit it protects.
In my case, the only circuit tripping is the one closest to my long wire antenna but there have been reports of similar problems that even affect some hams’ neighbors’ homes.
No real solution
As ARRL and many discussion boards pointed out, this seems to be a problem unique to Eaton breakers, specifically the arc fault type (BR series, with the white tail). Breakers of other manufacturers have been tested and were found to be immune to these problems. According to the 2013 article, Eaton was working with ARRL to find a solution to the problem but I doubt that anything came of this.
My house was built in 2017 and the newest Eaton breakers were installed at the time. One would hope that the solution could be as easy as replacing the problem breakers with ones from another manufacturer but this is simply not possible. While circuit breakers look on the outside as if they were compatible, they are not. Most manufacturers have their own system when it comes to the electrical box and Eaton is no exception. Not even all Eaton breakers of the BR series fit into the electrical box designed for BR-CA breakers.
Where does that leave us?
I reached out to Eaton but have not heard back from them. I keep having this problem and at this point I only see three ways to stop these problems from happening:
- Stop transmitting on the bands that cause the breaker to trip (not an option)
- Accept the tripping and live with it (not an option)
- Replace the whole electrical box and breakers with those of another manufacturer (possible but at a price tag of potentially several thousand Dollars this is also not an option. One AFCI breaker alone costs over $50 and it would need two dozen or so, plus a new electrical box and many hours of work for an electrician.)
Do you have the same problem? Did you find another solution? If so, let me know through the contact form on my website. I’ll be happy to add your solution to this article and together we can help other hams.
Where I am now
I got solar for my house now and part of the installation was a replacement of my main breaker box. The new box and all breakers are from Square D now and the problem is gone.
