Residential Kitchen
In a dwelling unit (residential), GFCI protection is only required for kitchen receptacles that serve the countertop surfaces. There's no requirement to GFCI protect receptacles that serve a refrigerator. Unless the fridge is plugged into a countertop receptacle.
National Electrical Code 2014
Chapter 2 Wiring and Protection
Article 210 Branch Circuits
I. General Provisions
210.8 Ground-Fault Circuit-Interrupter Protection for Personnel. Ground-fault circuit-interrupter protection for personnel shall be provided as required in 210.8(A) through (C). The ground-fault circuit-interrupter shall be installed in a readily accessible location.
(A) Dwelling Units. All 125-volt, single-phase, 15- and
20-ampere receptacles installed in the locations specified in
210.8(A)(1) through (10) shall have ground-fault circuit interrupter protection for personnel.
(6) Kitchens— where the receptacles are installed to serve the countertop surfaces.
Garages, Unfinished Basement, and Other Locations
If the refrigerator is in a garage, boathouse, or unfinished basement. All the receptacles are required to be GFCI protected, so the fridge will have to be plugged into a GFCI protected receptacle.
Why does the fridge trip the GFCI?
Any inductive load when switched off, can produce electromagnetic interference (EMI). This interference can, and often does, trip GFCI devices. Most vapor compression refrigerators have a few inductive loads, any of which could cause the trip.
Is there anything that can be done?
There are devices called snubbers that can be used to reduce, or eliminate the effects of EMI. Installing one between the fridge and the GFCI device, could prevent nuisance trips. The best solution though, is to connect the fridge to a non-GFCI protected circuit.
If that's all it takes, why isn't there already one built in?
While most (all) manufacturers are aware that refrigerators can cause nuisance tripping of GFCI devices, most (none) seem willing to provide a solution. It would be complete speculation for me to try and tell you why they don't care, so of course I'll go through a few possibilities.
- Cost.
Plain and simple, it costs money to implement a solution.
- Warranties and Operating Conditions.
Most refrigerators are designed to operate in a kitchen. Running them in dusty, dirty garages and basements could lead to more warranty covered repairs.
From the description, it sounds like the neutral may be shared between the two circuits, which you can't do with a GFCI. The GFCI is looking for an imbalance of current on the hot and neutral lines, so if the neutral is shared with another circuit, there will be some current returning on the neutral that did not go out on the hot.
If you can trace the circuit and find the connection between the neutrals on the two circuits, and isolate them, that would be the easiest and cheapest fix. If the neutral is shared via a multiwire branch circuit from the breaker and can't be split, you can change the gfci breaker to a standard breaker and install a gfci outlet after the neutral splits for the two branches. And I'm also seeing two pole gfci breakers which would allow you to replace the two breakers with one that provides gfci coverage to both circuits and should handle the shared neutral, which may be a good fall back option if you can't locate the shared neutral.
Best Answer
Yes this is correct; a GFCI will protect downstream loads. The purpose of this is that you only need a single GFCI outlet per circuit. Alternatively you could use a GFCI breaker, but these tend to be more expensive.
If this is not behavior you want and you can confirm that it is not needed for safety and code-compliance reasons (ie: it doesn't feed any downstream bathroom, kitchen or wet/damp location outlets), you can rewire the outlet with a pigtail instead of using the Load side of the outlet - the outlet will work as a standalone outlet and trips will not affect downstream loads.