Forum Title: HID lights tripping GFCI
Today at work some hid lights needed to be disconnected from one generator and reconnected to another. The lights were unplugged from a standard 15A receptacle and plugged into a 15A GFCI receptacle. When turning on the lights they tripped the GFCI plug at the new generator. Nothing had changed from the time of disconnect and reconnect. Out of curiosity I took a reading across the hot and ground prongs on the cord end. I got an initial reading of about 700,000 ohms, but that number immediately began to slowly fall. I watched for about a minute as the resistance fell to about 500,000 ohms. It would have been nice to leave the meter on for a while to see where the number ended up, but some people wanted light so they could get back to work. Seeing that the ground leakage appeared to be minimal, I figured that this must be an inherent property of hid lighting. I removed one GFCI plug and replaced it with a standard receptacle, plugged the lights back in, and they work fine now. Why the ground fault? Or is it even a fault? Something to do with the capacitors? The coils? It seems to me that there should be zero continuity to ground. Hopefully somebody can put my curiosity to rest with a good explanation because it isn't making sense to me.Thanks a bunch!Shawn.
Category: General Electrical Discussion Post By: John Baker (Wards Grove, IL), 03/23/2017
If there nothing wrong with the circuit feeding the GFCI, 99.9% of the time the GFCI dedected leakage. The light should have not tripped the GFCI. Exactly where is anyone's guess. Possibly in the transformer would be my first guess. The only way to know is to disassemble it and meg the windings.

- Ideal Air Systems Inc (Montello (town), WI), 03/25/2017

I consider 500,000 ohms as unaceptable. Get a megger on it and find out what you really have. Meters are not real good indicators of insulation breakdown. But do excellent on dead shorts.There is much discussion in our industry concerning how much leakage is to much. The number seems to vary from person to person. For example: for me, motors reading less than 5 meg ohms it gets pulled. Exception would be DC motors where you can really not have a zone of confidence.

- Dina Haer (Burnside, KY), 03/25/2017

Thanks for the tip guys. I'll see if our company even has a megger, I've never seen one at the shop.Shawn.

- Mark Allen Heating And Cooling (Center, KS), 03/25/2017

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