General > General Technical Chat
RCD's and portable generators
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Simon:
Up until now we had RCD's fitted to the equipment. These apparently failed the EMC test, so we took them off. In my mind the supply should have the RCD not the user. The generator has a bonding point, I doubt customers use it so the RCD will do little. We are going to supply an RCD that comes off the shelf wired into a short extension.

What is live or neutral on a generator that is not bonded? if the live were to become exposed it would harm no one until a secondary connection was made to earth so that current can flow. if what we normally chose to use as live were bonded to earth then it would be the neutral and cause lots of confusion and trip any other protection possibly in the machine.

I have a solar inverter connected to some panels that were just on the ground. A connector was damaged and it tripped. This was a transformerless inverter so they wanted to do the impedance check.
mendip_discovery:

--- Quote from: Simon on July 12, 2023, 02:49:16 pm ---Up until now we had RCD's fitted to the equipment. These apparently failed the EMC test, so we took them off. In my mind the supply should have the RCD not the user. The generator has a bonding point, I doubt customers use it so the RCD will do little. We are going to supply an RCD that comes off the shelf wired into a short extension.

--- End quote ---

This would be what I would do. Its adds a few ££ to the cost but it means that people won't growl at you for not having one. Hopefully you would get an off the shelf unit with a good EMC report.

The issue I have with some of the standards is that they are often written for a specific case and then they are vague about it leaving you wondering if it applies to your case or not. You could ask 5 experts and they would give you 5 differing answers, 6 if one of them is an engineer.
Simon:
The off the shelf RCD is CE marked.
Jeroen3:
How can a passive device fail EMC tests?
Simon:
no idea, the RCD was fitted to a power supply
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