About a year ago, we had a large low transformer fire on our block in Brooklyn, NY. That's according to ConEd response team. Before and during the fire which lasted few hours, voltage has been jumping up and down. By next day, I had three GFCI outlets in kitchen and bathroom tripped and I could not reset them back. I opened them up and they had signs of hot wire melting onto the plastic. Other building tenants had similar problems, few tenants said they had to replace appliances ie. microwave, computer.
My question is about the outlets. Can transformer issue on the street cause what I described in the apartment? Is there way to protect building or individual apartments from grid issue? Thanks
Best Answer
Those kinds of power problems? Yes. You can change your main breaker to a shunt trip breaker. Then add some SCADA that looks for serious voltage defects like lost neutral or voltage above/below minimums. When that occurs, the system fires the shunt trip, tripping the main breaker.
However such a system is not a commodity, so it'd be pricey. A lot more than a few GFCIs and a microwave.