I am installing a subpanel in an outbuilding and understand that I need to use a four wire feed and keep the ground separate from the neutral at the subpanel. I know that is code, but I like to understand how things work. I am trying to conceptualize how a ground fault on a circuit in the outbuilding would trip a breaker and which would trip. There are four breakers involved. The main, the breaker supplying the subpanel, the "main" at the subpanel and the final circuit breaker. If a ground fault occurred, which one would trip? It would seem the final would need to, in order to isolate the problem. Does the surge caused by the fault travel all the way back to the main through the ground wire then back to the final breaker?
4 Answers
Looking at a diagram, is often a good way to understand a problem. Below is a simple diagram that shows the fault current path.
You can see that the fault current will flow through all the breakers, and return to the source (the transformer) along the grounding conductor.
You might be inclined to think that the fault current will be extremely high (tens of thousands of amperes). However, due to the fact that wires have resistance, the current might be surprisingly low.
Without knowing the exact length and size of each wire, it's not possible to approximate the resistance. If you did have that information, you could calculate the resistance. With that, the voltage, and Ohm's law, you could calculate the fault current.
For this example, we'll assume the fault current is less than 100 amperes.
Because the current is not above the instantaneous trip level of any of the breakers, the short-circuit protection of the breakers will not trip. However, circuit breakers also have thermal protection, which opens the circuit based on overheating caused by current flow (overcurrent).
Each breaker will trip according to it's trip curve, based on multiples of current over the rated current of the breaker. Basically, as the fault current flows, the thermal protection device in each breaker begins to heat up (along with all the wiring in the circuit). Obviously the larger breakers (100 & 200 in the diagram) can handle more heat (current), so they're going to be able to handle the less than 100 ampere fault current.
Since the fault current is higher than the rated current of the smaller breaker (20 in the diagram), the thermal protection device will begin to overheat. With such a high current flowing through it, the device will likely open within a few seconds. However, if the current was lower, it could take much longer to trip (even minutes).
If we take another example, where we've figured the fault current at 150 amperes. Even though the current is now higher than the rated current on three of the four breakers, the smaller breaker is likely still going to trip first. This is because the time before the thermal protection of a breaker trips, is based on the the amount of fault current above the rated current.
The fault current is only 1.5 times higher than the larger breaker, but 7.5 times higher than the smaller breaker. Because of this, the smaller breaker will trip sooner. Thermal protection is designed this way, so that loads can draw over the rated current, but only for a limited amount of time. This allows things like motors to start, without tripping the breaker.
In most real world applications, the smaller breaker will trip first. If the resistance of the fault circuit was low, it's possible for the fault current to be above the instantaneous trip level of all the breakers. In that case, the first breaker (main) will likely trip first.
If any of the breakers are GFCI breakers, and the fault is to ground, the GFCI breaker will trip first.
More realistic example
This example will use the diagram above, but will attempt to estimate a more realistic fault current. We'll say that there's 100' of 3/0 CU. wire from the pole to the main service panel lugs. 3/0 CU. is 0.0000766 ohms/ft., so that's 0.00766 ohms.
0.0000766 * 100' = 0.0076 ohms
Next there's 50' of 3 AWG CU. from the main panel feeder breaker, to the second panel main lugs. #3 CU. is 0.000245 ohms/ft., so that's 0.01225 ohms.
0.000245 * 50' = 0.01225 ohms
Next there's 25' of 12 AWG CU. from the second panel breaker, out to the fault. #12 CU. is 0.00193 ohms/ft., for a total of 0.04825 ohms.
0.00193 * 25 = 0.4825 ohms
Now that we've reached the fault, the current has to follow back along the grounding conductor. The grounding conductor is made up of 25' of 12 AWG CU., 50' of 8 AWG CU., and 100' of 3/0 CU. back to the pole.
0.00193 * 25' = 0.04825 ohms
0.000764 * 50' = 0.0382 ohms
0.0000766 * 100' = 0.00766 ohms
Totaling up all the resistances, we end up with 0.16227 ohms.
0.00766 + 0.01225 + 0.04825 + 0.04825 + 0.0382 + 0.00766 = 0.16227
Using Ohm's Law, the fault current can easily be calculated using the formula current = voltage / resistance (I=E/R).
120 volts / 0.16227 ohms = 739.5 amperes
739.5 amperes of fault current.
That's 3.695 times the 200 ampere breaker, which according to a random trip curve I looked up, should trip the breaker between 8-25 seconds. It's 7.395 times the 100 ampere breakers, which would trip between 2-7 seconds. It's about 37 times the 20 ampere breaker, which is likely beyond the instantaneous trip current level.
In this example, the 20 ampere breaker will trip first (unless any of the other breakers are GFCI breakers).
answered Jan 31, 2016 at 17:17
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Thank you, that makes sense. I was under the impression that the breaker handled a ground fault like a short. So a ground fault would not trip the breaker as fast as a short, I assume? Commented Jan 31, 2016 at 19:48
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@EmmettTrussell No, it is just like a short. A ground wire is basically a spare neutral in a sense that if anything connects to it, it'll also run the current back to the source. A short would be between say the hot and the neutral. A ground fault is just another term for a short, but between the hot and some conductive surface. A ground should have almost the same path and resistance as the neutral and so they would flip basically at the same time.– TFKCommented Jan 31, 2016 at 20:55
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@Tester101 In a tree diagram of the electrical system, where each part down the line has a smaller breaker (main as trunk, sub as limb, circuit as branch), wouldn't the nearest breaker (before the fault) always trip first as it'd have the smallest breaker - so the fastest trip? (We'll assume here than the inst. trip settings are all coordinated)– TFKCommented Feb 1, 2016 at 14:33
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That looks good. I would agree that is a fair example. You are actually being generous with the wire since this is a dwelling unit the 200 amp feed would require 2/0 and the 100 amp would be #4 so that would have a little higher resistance than your example. The Square D Thermal-Magnetic curve I am looking at shows the instantaneous trip at 9 times the trip rating of the breaker so if you exceed that for any two breakers in series than either of them could trip. So, if the garage was fed with a 40 amp and #8 then a ground fault of 360 amps would be likely to cause a coodination problem. Commented Feb 1, 2016 at 15:30
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@ArchonOSX I don't think you can feed the second panel with #4. The old table 310.15(B)(7) only applied to service conductors, so wouldn't apply to branch feeders. The new wording allows 83% of rating, but still only applies to service conductors and feeders that supply "the entire load associated with a one-family dwelling". Commented Feb 1, 2016 at 17:23
Hold on, folks. The fault may not be at an endpoint. Consider a fault inside the sub-panel, i.e. your L1 feeder wire frays against the sub-panel case. It's before the sub-panel main breaker, so no help there. Without a wired ground path back to the main panel, the main panel breaker would not trip, as not enough current would flow. (earth is not a great conductor, so grounding electrodes hammered into the earth won't serve as a high-current ground.)
So without a wired ground, the 'ground' in the outbuilding would simply float up to 120v. You'd have 120v on every ground pin and metal part of the electrical wiring, and any equipment which grounds chassis. (neutral would still be neutral - remember they are isolated from each other in a sub-panel - so equipment would still work normally.)
Of course your outbuilding 'ground' (now hot) would hunger for a path to main panel ground, and it may find one. As long as flow is less than 100A (i.e. resistance is >1.2 ohms) it won't trip the main panel but will make heat - up to 12,000 watts of it - in places you probably don't want heat!
Or it could be seeking out parallel metal pipes and causing galvanic corrosion in them, and it could potentially do this for a long time. Which can put gunk in your drinking water, as Flint learned. Streetcar systems, hastily built, used to have a big problem with corroding parallel gas and water mains until they buried their own "ground feeder"... in other words, exactly what we are talking about here.
Anyway, to answer your question, current goes through all the breakers that it goes through. A fault is simply more current flowing through the "hot". Ideally enough to trip a breaker, but not necessarily. We try to help that along by providing solid current paths for faults to take.
answered Jan 31, 2016 at 19:29
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There is a ground running back to the main. So in this case the breaker in the main feeding to the sub would trip first.– TFKCommented Jan 31, 2016 at 19:50
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1Hmm well if you have the 4 wire method there is a ground wire for fault current and if you have the 3 wire method the fault current goes back on the neutral. The ground would also have to be broken in your scenario for that to work or the bond screw was left out in a 3 wire setup, but that is why they eliminated the 3 wire method in favor of the 4 wire. Either way the ground is a poor conductor hence the need for a wire type ground conductor to facilitate the action of the overcorrect device. Commented Jan 31, 2016 at 20:32
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The OP specifically asked what would happen with a ground-fault on a circuit in the outbuilding "I am trying to conceptualize how a ground fault on a circuit in the outbuilding would trip a breaker and which would trip.". They also said they ran a 4 wire feeder to the outbuilding, so there is a grounding conductor to the panel. Commented Jan 31, 2016 at 21:30
Short answer: The fastest (more sensitive) breaker will trip first.
This isn't necessarily the smallest. Which is why the code has refers to "Selective Coordination". See the definition in Article 100.
Coordination (Selective) Localization of an overcurrent condition to restrict outages to the circuit or equipment affected, accomplished by the selection and installation of overcur rent protective devices and their ratings or settings for the full range of available overcurrents, from overload to the maximum available fault cur rent, and for the full range of overcur rent protective device opening times associated with those overcorrects.
50 feet of #14 is only .126 ohms giving you a short circuit current of 952 amps at 120 volts during a ground fault or short circuit. Even 200 feet of #14 is still 238 amps in excess of the trip ratings of all the breakers all the way back your main in the house if you have a 200 amp panel. As the wire gets larger the short circuit current only goes up from there since the resistance and impedance drops.
answered Jan 31, 2016 at 18:03
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238 amperes is only 1.19 times the rated current of a 200 ampere breaker, and 2.38 times the 100 ampere breakers. That's likely far below the instantaneous trip rating. Commented Jan 31, 2016 at 22:23
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Yes, but that is at 200 feet of #14 that would be at the extreme of most dwelling units. The average would usually be closer to the 50 feet so almost 1000 amps or even more if it was #12 wire. Certainly the magnetic trip will come in well before the thermal trip at these levels. It would be nice if the smallest breaker trips first but I wouldn't bet a paycheck on it. Commented Jan 31, 2016 at 23:29
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a 50' circuit would only be 25' away from the panel (along the wire). You also have to consider the circuit from the main panel to the second panel, and back. Commented Jan 31, 2016 at 23:48
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True, but that wire is going to be considerably larger and have much less resistance. 200' of #4 has .05 ohms of resistance. Considering that. If the fault were to occur in the feeder or closer to the sub-panel the fault current would be considerably higher. Commented Feb 1, 2016 at 10:45
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I've added what I feel is a fairly accurate example to my answer. Commented Feb 1, 2016 at 13:39
The smallest (amperage) and closest (in protection) to the fault should trip first. So if it's caused by a branch circuit in the sub, then the breaker in the sub would trip.
Think of it as the fault is working back to the main, yes, but along both lines - the ground and the hot supplying it. The hot line will reach the nearest breaker and trip.
