Last night I was at a local tavern when the power went out in a large section of town. This was probably due to a storm outdoors. The power was only out for about 2 minutes. When it came back on, one wall containing several neon beer signs, a jukebox, and 4 video games did not come back on, while the rest of the building was fine. The bartender found that the breaker for that one wall had tripped, and had to reset it. Once reset, everything was fine.
I dont understand why a power outage would cause that breaker to trip????
My only thought is that this circuit is drawing near it's maximum amperage capacity for that breaker, and the surge of all those devices caused it to trip. Yet, if this is the case, why did it not trip when it was reset? The surge would be the same..... However, I got to thinking that when the whole section of town was turned back on, that the voltage would be low for a few seconds due to all the loads, and the lower voltage to those devices would cause then to attempt to compensate by drawing more amps...... Then the thought would be whether it's the electronics in the jukebox and video games, or the high voltage transformers on the neon signs that would draw the excess current? Does this make sense?
Anyone have any thoughts on this?
Thanks