Spacepak loses 24 volts after brief power glitch, returns if 240 volt breaker cycled off/on

a safety’s shutting it down

https://www.icmcontrols.com/product/icm493/

This may just be the way that the ESP-G air handler control works. I wonder if an inexpensive time delay-on-break control would solve the issue?

https://www.supplyhouse.com/Packard-PTD203-Adjustable-Delay-on-Break-Timer-6-Sec-to-10-Min

My thoughts are that once the power is interrupted, the power restore time can be artificially extended with a time delay of 90 seconds or longer. This would also offer modest compressor protection, since the condensing unit contactor (which is powered by the ESP-G transformer) would have a short delay before being energized again.

It is a low enough cost to try it and get rid if it if it does not solve your problem. Lower than the cost of a circuit board i might guess.

Agree. this time delay can not handle the entire air handler load. I was thinking of only the transformer in your case. Here are 2 options. (click on the photo and zoom in)

@109A_5

Surge & Spike Protection devices do not fix power drop out issues.

The ICM 493 has High and Low voltage settings as well as phase imbalance and time delays all settings adjustable

2. The air handler, of course, is in a very inconvenient attic that requires lots of work to get to (removing cloths from a closet…)

Then how do you expect a tech to properly service it?

@Jon_23

You could drop a 24 volt cable into the closet and connect R,W,Y, C etc to a small terminal switch located in a junction box

This is not really related to this problem; however, it has the same effect.

I was experiencing nuisance lockouts on an oil burner. After I was unable to detect the problem with the Honeywell R8184G primary control, I decided to install a Carlin 70200 Primary Control to see if the diagnostics would help pinpoint the problem — and they did.

The history stored in the control showed that there was a low-voltage condition occurring during the burner cycle that locked out the burner. The customer could reset the burner and restore heat (the customer was at the farthest point in my service area, so it was not convenient to get there instantly). Later that day, after about 7 or 8 burner cycles, I was finally able to observe and confirm the low-voltage condition. It also seemed to happen more often on windy days.

I told the customer my findings and asked him to contact an electrician to investigate the power problem and determine whether there were any other electronics in the home experiencing issues. The electrician later reported that there was no problem with the house wiring, and that was the end of it.

Then I remembered that the Riello oil burner uses a primary control design that operates using the back EMF generated by the burner motor while it is running. In other words, the burner motor itself generates the electrical power used by the control electronics, which isolates the control from momentary disturbances in the incoming power supply.

That means that even if there were a very brief electrical interruption — enough for a conventional primary control to interpret as a fault condition and go into safety lockout — the Riello control might never see the interruption because the burner motor continues spinning from its own inertia during the split-second outage, continuing to generate power for the control.

For lack of a better term, I called this condition “dirty electric” because neither I nor the electrical experts could positively identify the exact source of the problem.

Did I actually solve the electrical problem? Nope. But eventually it will either manifest itself in another way, or it never will. Either way, it does not matter much to me because the customer no longer experiences nuisance lockouts — and that is what the customer really cares about.

As far as your electrical "Glitch" is concerned, you may never find the cause and therefore always have the problem. If the $13 time delay gets you past it and stops the lockout problem, then I would call that a WIN !!!

The ICM493 may do what you want, it really depends on its sensitivity to the drop out duration, which is not well published.

If you are experiencing flickering and actual momentary drop outs you may want to complain to the electric utility. If trees (etc.) are causing the primary phases to touch and a utility re-closure device is tripping and resetting and / or simply loose connections that can and should be repaired.

The IMC493 literature states brown-out percentages not drop out duration.

My ICM203F is pretty fast. I have not done any actual controlled tests to measure the minimum dropout duration for it to keep the circuit open for the delay time.

As far as the utility power issue, in some places there other means to motivate the utility to repair their defects. And some utilities are more proactive than others.

If the utility power defects are not repaired they generally don't get better by themselves. They may get worse and you may simply loose power during some storm and it may not come back on until the utility gets around to restoring it. You may be the last on their priority list.

Personally I'd rather the repair effort is during good weather.

My point is the IMC493 literature seems to define percentage brown outs or voltage droop, not short duration drop outs, to me there is a difference.

To me the power issues you describe are due to a lack of maintenance of the electrical system. Other than severe weather causing damage and outages, the power should not have any weather related interruptions.

I kind of don't see the point of the data logger. I am convinced @Jon_23 is convinced that the power quality issue is real. I'm not convinced the utility needs to see Time / Date data since it is always storm related. If the data logger actually captures waveform data an engineer may find it interesting. Will it tell the Lineman where the problem is ? Probably not.

IMO public utilities should not have shareholders, seems like a conflict of interests to me.