How to prevent inrush current caused by LED bulbs from tripping a breaker?

Question

I have a 15A circuit in my house which has only two things that draw meaningful current: my TV and a set of 8 LED floodlights around my house's exterior. The TV draws max 150W and the bulbs (Sylvania Night Chasers) draw 22W each for a total of ~176W.

I frequently (maybe 90% of the time) trip the circuit breaker if I start with the TV on and then turn on the floodlights. If I turn on the floods with the TV off, no problem. If I turn on the floods and THEN turn on the TV, no problem.

My intuition was that inrush current might be the cause and, to my surprise after searching, it turns out LED lights are known to have large inrush current because of the capacitors in their driver circuitry. My theory is that, in my case, since each of the 8 bulbs has its own circuitry, this is leading to a very large inrush current and the breaker is not happy with that.

I really like the bulbs so I'd like to solve this without installing new units where lots of LEDs share common driver circuits. What are some possible ways to fix this situation? I can think of 3:

• My electrician suggests simply pulling the circuit apart and making sure the floods are on their own 15A circuit. I appreciate this but it feels like a band-aid?
• I understand that there's such a thing as an inrush current limiter. I have no experience with them though and can't tell if it's appropriate to my situation.
• The flood bulbs are dimmable and I can imagine a device might exist that, when I turn them on, smoothly ramps them up rather than all at once - but I don't know enough about LED drivers to know which side of the driver the dimming happens so maybe this is not relevant.

EDIT: added pic of breaker per request in comments:

Answer 1

This is pretty weird - it takes a lot of inrush to actually pop a breaker. A typical 15A thermal magnetic breaker takes 150A or more for one second to trip, and 500+A to trip in a tenth of a second. Have you confirmed that it's not a defective breaker?

There's a couple of approaches here that could help you.

• Change out the brand of bulb. It's possible that other bulbs may not have this inrush problem. You could confirm that it's actually inrush by temporarily removing bulbs one at a time until the breaker no longer pops. Once you have confirmed that, time to try another brand of LED.

• Replace the switch with a slider type dimmer switch. It's impossible to turn those on instantly, so just by turning on the switch you will automatically be limiting inrush. One trick to this solution: most dimmer switches are only rated for 150W of LED lights. Your 176W of lights will exceed the capacity. You will either need to split the lights between two dimmers, or locate a 200W+ LED rated dimmer switch.

Answer 2

First thing to do is to find out what kind of a breaker trip you have and do some basic diagnostics as defined by Siemens. This document has all the details.

Once you determine if this is an overload vs. AFCI we can work on a solution.

Answer 3

I have a 15A circuit in my house which has only two things that draw meaningful current... I frequently (maybe 90% of the time) trip the circuit breaker if I start with the TV on and then turn on the floodlights. If I turn on the floods with the TV off, no problem. If I turn on the floods and THEN turn on the TV, no problem.

that implies there are 1 or more other items on the circuit, which by your reckoning don't draw meaningful current? so assuming there really isn't some other significant device on the circuit your problem sounds like a combination of the inrush current of too many LED drivers in addition to power factor. the tv and LED's are all capacitive / leading power factor which do not help.

My intuition was that inrush current might be the cause and, to my surprise after searching, it turns out LED lights are known to have large inrush current

https://professional-electrician.com/technical/mythbusting-with-zano-controls/

It’s a contentious subject, but independent testing has found a huge disparity between the wattage listed on an LED’s box and the power it actually consumes.

combine numerous lights each having their own driver, all on an AFCI breaker which have gained notoriety for nuisance trips, and there you go.

simply test run 1 bulb, 2..3..4 bulbs and find what at what total number trips reliably and then doesn't, that will validate your theory on led inrush current being the problem, in addition to using a meter to measure inrush current on the circuit and also a watt meter ($10 amazon) to measure power factor. And of course you could test swap the afci breaker with a $10 traditional 15A breaker and see if it's more of an AFCI nuisance trip problem.

https://www.eaton.com/gb/en-gb/catalog/lighting-and-controls/inrush-limiter-for-led-lightings.html

LED current inrush limiting isn't new, and while I feel like your electrician should know about them I also just watched goodluckkarly on tiktok ask if anyone has ever known about how you can just pick lemons off a tree. The solution to your problem is measurable, testable, and solvable; you said this crowd is tough... I wouldn't describe the crowd here as tough.

Answer 4

I agree fully with crip659's assessment that this seems to be an unlikely cause of a breaker trip. Maybe there's a short somewhere that you just haven't found yet.

However, since the bulbs are dimmable, simply replace the simple toggle switch with a dimmer switch. When you want the lights on and the TV is already on, turn the dimmer all the way down, turn the lights on, then bring up the brightness to your desired level.

An LED dimmer isn't particularly expensive, so even if this doesn't work, you haven't lost a lot in giving it a try.