Category Archives: AFCI

Flood Fault Circuit Interrupter Could Save Lives

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What if you didn’t have to risk your life to disconnect the power during a catastrophic storm? That’s a question many people in Houston were asking themselves as they watched water from Hurricane Harvey and other storms surge through the streets, swell in the gutters, and flood their homes.

Among these Houstonians were engineering students [Jon] and [Cyrus Jyan]. They watched as homeowners fought to safely disconnect their homes from the power grid and said, it shouldn’t have to be this way. They designed the Flood Fault Circuit Interrupter to monitor target areas and disconnect the power automatically when a …read more

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Ham Radio Trips Circuit Breakers

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Arc-fault circuit breakers are a boon for household electrical safety. The garden-variety home electrical fire is usually started by the heat coming from a faulty wire arcing over. But as any radio enthusiast knows, sparks also give off broadband radio noise. Arc-fault circuit interrupters (AFCI) are special circuit breakers that listen for this noise in the power line and trip when they hear it. The problem is that they can be so sensitive that they cut out needlessly. Check out the amusing video below the break.

Our friend [Martin] moved into a new house, and discovered that he could flip …read more

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Tripping Out: A Field Guide to Circuit Protection

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My introduction to circuit protection came at the tender age of eight. Being a curious lad with an inventive – and apparently self-destructive – bent, I decided to make my mother a lamp. I put a hose clamp around the base of a small light bulb, stripped the insulation off an old extension cord, and jammed both ends of the wires under the clamp. When I plugged my invention into an outlet in the den, I saw the insulation flash off the cord just before the whole house went dark. Somehow the circuit breaker on the branch circuit failed and …read more

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