Hi all, I consider myself a bit of an amateur electronics expert as I design and build process control systems for fun, yet I battled for weeks with a spurious RCD tripping problem that I couldn’t pin down. I did all the usual isolating circuits and changing RCD etc and even went down to using a oscilloscope to monitor back emf pulses on time/thermostatic switching devices (heating pump for example) as well as testing resistive, capacitive and inductive factors between live, natural and earth to see if this could explain an imbalance between live and natural. Despite the fact that the law of electronics says that if you disconnect and reconnect a circuit, no matter how quickly and in no matter how short the bursts, the current in live should match that of natural (assuming no earth fault) and hence no RCD should tip by switching something on and off quickly, in the end I think I pinned the problem down to a plug with a lose natural screw!!! On further investigation it seems that the lose natural lead in a plug was causing sparking and bursts of short disconnections and reconnections due to movement (people walking in the room) and because the device plugged in was a modern large screen TV with a switched mode power supply it wasn’t obvious (IE TV didn’t flicker or anything because the power supply had plenty of reserve for the short breaks in mains) but the short burst in disconnection was making the switched mode power supply kick back some reverse emf which seems to be confusing the RCD into tripping. All in all I went round the house checking that terminals on any none molded plugs were in order and the problem seems to have gone away. It nuts I hear you say as it doesn’t make sense according to electronics law but that was what it turned out to be in my case :)
Ricky, August 2010