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Two Dimmer 2 burned out


Scotsh

Question

Hello,

 

at first a disclaimer. The two Dimmers in question are not related to my other question here (posted without getting a replay since April).

 

Two of my Dimmers 2 have burned out about two months ago. The Dimmers had been operational without issue for at least 3 weeks, although the house was still unoccupied pending further renovation work. They have been used for demostration purposes and short visits in the evening.

The whole electric installation of the house was overhauled by a qualified electrician who has also installed all of our Fibaro modules (over 40 all together). One day he switched off the FI-Schutzschalter (i do not know the proper translation, so i just call it "Fuse") for the entire floor as he did some other work there. Both LED-installations connected to the Dimmers had been on at the time (Dimming level unknown). When he switched the fuse back on, both LED installations went bright again, but a few minutes later they couldnt be switched off, via the wall switch. He noticed the smell of burned plastic and disabled the fuse again. Then he discovered this:
 

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Both Dimmer modules look like this now.

 

 

One of the Dimmer modules was connected to three of these ->

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  (combined load 33 watts)

The other Dimmer was connected to eight of these ->

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(combined load 48 watts)

 

The shop (Intuitech, claiming to be the first-level Fibaro support in Germany) is claiming that we are at fault and they can not compensate the burnt out modules (they claim to have sent them to Fibaro, who confirmed that we are at fault).

 

I do not understand what we have done wrong. The Dimmer 2 module is supposed to support a load of 250 watts and we had the installation done by a professional electrician.

Frankly i am concerned now for safety reasons. The scenario that has happened could is basically the same as a power outage, meaning it could potentially happen again anytime. When the power went back on the lights have been on, so there was power on a melted module beneath a wall switch. I do not know if this could have caused a fire or something. We do have 10 other Dimmer 2 modules in the house and are seriously considering getting rid of them...

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It can happen. When you turning RCD off and turning it on again on certain load, it can make a spikes in the current and it's a deadly stuff for triacs which are used in dimmers. When you turning RCD on again, you have to switch off all fuses, turn RCD on and turn fuses on, one by one after that.

It happen to me also. Electrician made same mistake on one of my projects, burning 5 dimmers out of 14 mounted. And that was not fibaro dimmers, just some "normal" cable operated.

Power outage is not the same, you don't have spikes in mains..  

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  • Inquirer
  • Thank you for your answer.

    So you are suggesting that the electrician is at fault and shouldnt have turned on the RCD (also thanks for providing a translation for FI-Schutzschalter :D) with all fuses on?

    Well, at least it is good to know for me if i find myself in a situation where the RCD has been triggered for some reason.

     

    Regarding a possible power outage, how is this different from switching on the RCD?

     

    However, i have learnd from this that i will ensure that the parameter 9 of the Dimmer is set to "0" -> does not save the state before a power failure, it returns to „off” position

    Would that have prevented the problem?

    I would strongly suggest that this should be the default setting and user should be warned of stuff like this happening (the manual is really bad in that regard)

    Edited by Scotsh
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    Yes, switching RCD (in USA is called GFCI :) ) may cause voltage spike, very likely when switch on surge current is high (lot of devices turn on, connected to power outlet etc.) 

    It's not so easy to explain in few words, alternating current is a much more complicated than DC. Impedance, conductance, active power, reactive power, all this thing are AC only.

    You can read about voltage spikes here: 

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     and lot other places on the internet.

     

    Power outage is not the same, some other things happening. Also power stations and transformators have some spikes suppressors installed.  

     

    It doesn't matter with parameters. Triac's anode is connected all the time, you cannot change it with parameters. 

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  • Inquirer
  • On 7/10/2019 at 9:41 PM, jires said:

    It doesn't matter with parameters. Triac's anode is connected all the time, you cannot change it with parameters.  

     

    The entire floor connected to that RCD switch has 8 Dimmers installed. Only two of them melted down, exactly those two where the light was on when the RCD was switched off (and later on again), the other Dimmers were switched off.

     

     

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    sry my english is bad...i write in german.

     

    Hallo Scotsh, dein Elektriker scheint dich auch nicht gerade gut beraten zu haben, da du oben beschreibst,. dass deine Leuchtmittel nur "33 bzw. 48 Watt" haben. Das Problem ist, dass die mit 250 Watt rein ohmische Verbraucher, wie Halogenlampen,  meinen, LED´s haben einen 10-25 mal so großen Einschaltstrom, das du da maximal 25 Watt an einen Dimmer betreiben solltest, wenn du nicht weißt wie groß die Scheinleistung ist, welche bei dem Dimmer maximal 200 VA sein darf. Dann ist die Frage, ob die Dimmer richtig konfiguriert waren: Phasenanschnitt oder Phasenabschnitt, bei Netzwiederkehr 100% an, aus oder gedimmt? Es gibt so viele Dinge zu beachten, aber eins sollte man beachten, wenn es um Elektrik geht sollte man nicht sparen! Ich habe nur 7 Dimmer, aber noch nie Probleme mit gehabt. Beherzige meine Tipps.

     

    Grüße Sven

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    This is an old thread, but just one question - isn't the minimum load for a Dimmer 2 at 50VA, meaning you should have a Bypass 2 module installed to reduce the minimum load to 5 VA?
    I heard rumours of burnt Dimmer 2 due to low load without Bypass 2...

     

    Any experience in that?

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