What Causes My Main Power Switch To Shut Off?

[Borisyo]

Main power switch in my apartment is shared between me and neighbour. He is connected to my power source and has separate electricity counter. In our apartment's lowest floor about 4 months ago moved in computer and technology specialized shop just for a fact. This shop has 3 satellite antennas on apartment's rooftop and just to mention my neighbour also has 1 satellite antenna. Today our main power switch started jumping down and prior everything was alright. I suspected LCD TV, digital decoder, Printer/Fax and DSL modem to be culprit and tested this but everything was fine when i shut down them all. Also i have Haier fridge that often produces strange sounds, like something is falling in it or gets hit within. I can't test this with fridge because food needs to be preserved in cool environment.

What can be the problem here? What would you suggest?

Thanks.

 

[solair]

It depends on what you mean by "main switch"

If it's an RCD, it will be labelled RCD and should have something like 30mA written on it. If it's a normal circuit breaker it will be smaller and lablled with something like B16 or B20, B32, B63 etc (or possibly C16 C20 depending on the profile).

If the RCD is tripping it means there's something that has a fault that is causing a leak to earth. This could mean faulty insulation on a cable, something has become wet e.g. you might have a leak and water is dripping onto an appliance or into an electrical fitting.

The best way of finding out what the problem is is to unplug everything. Then reset the RCD.

Then start plugging things back in one by one until the RCD trips. When it trips you will know what it is

If it is just a normal circuit breaker tripping it most likely means that your system is overloaded or, it could mean that there is a short circuit between live and neutral somewhere.

Find out what the rating of the breaker is and that will let you know how much power you can pull through that particular circuit.

You could check the ratings of all your appliances and add up the watts.

Then divide your total by the voltage (230V, I assume in Israel?) then that will give you the total load in amps.

If that is more than the rating of the circuit breaker, then you need to have more circuits installed or reduce the number of appliances you are using.

E.g.

C20 breaker - 20Amps
20amps at 230V is 4600Watts (4.6kW) So, if you have more than 4600Watts as a connected load, the circuit breaker will trip.

Typical RCDs