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Smart meter tripping RCD anymore than anecdotal evidence?

With have heard reports of smart meters tripping RCDs, is there any more than anecdotal evidence?

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  • Anyway, it was not the Smart Meter and the consumer unit is EV ready.

    I posted the photo of the test meter from my phone, but switched to the laptop for the text as posting from a phone onto this forum is not practical.

  • 400 -700k is not on its own going to fire an RCD. Are you able to measure the AC  leakage currents directly?

    I have found that a clamp meter that can see tens of mA that I can thread the L and N through to show only what the RCD part is seeing (as in Lcurrent -Ncurrent) can be great assistance here, not least because it can be left wired in while the circuit is running and various things are plugged in and out, heater thermostats operated and so on.    You may have a capacitance live to earth rather than a resistance - either a lumped element marked capacitor that has a fault to metal case or is miswired, or a stray capacitance as part of something else like electronics or a heater element. I presume you do not have access to a meter that can measure  fractions of a microfarad? 

    A similar oddball moment, a colleague of mine at work used an RF  network analyser (sort of thing that generates a swept RF frequency and measures the phase and magnitude of the current drawn vs frequency) to trace a rather odd wiring fault by spotting cables where the L and N capacitance to the earth core was wildly different from each other. I'm not recommending that as a means of normal fault finding, coming well into the category of 'over the top'  for normal use but I mention it to point out that a DC only insulation test may not actually reveal as much as an AC measurement. In his case it found a long decorated over fused spur on the ring where the load had been removed but it had been rewired so when it was in the on position there was a ring albeit one with a fuse in the live loop, and when it was switched off it became 2 centre fed radials. Until the fuse blew. Then it became a fault in the live continuity.

    Good luck with what sounds like it may be a long haul.

    M.

  • About 20 year sago I upgraded a ring final in a 70s house. I added a 30mA R.C.D. to offer additional protection as there was a toddler about. The R.C.D. tripped off but testing revealed no faults. So I removed all sockets on the circuit and inspected them. Some socket terminal screws were not very tight. I reterminated all cables and retightened the socket screws. The R.C.D. did not trip off after that.

    Z.

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  • About 20 year sago I upgraded a ring final in a 70s house. I added a 30mA R.C.D. to offer additional protection as there was a toddler about. The R.C.D. tripped off but testing revealed no faults. So I removed all sockets on the circuit and inspected them. Some socket terminal screws were not very tight. I reterminated all cables and retightened the socket screws. The R.C.D. did not trip off after that.

    Z.

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