Electric Fence Charger Died I believe from Lightening thru the Ground

[Willman]

(Not an electrician)

You should drive a ground rod nearby that sub panel and at a minimum ground the box to it and ideally add a ground bus and move the grounds to that bus.

Yes, by that pic it appears there is no ground conductor going to a ground rod (or two by new code)

 

[MAX-24-Dean]

It would be good to pull in a #10 copper ground wire. A #10 is good for up to a 60Amp breaker for a subpanel feeder. The picture shows 3 conductors in the feeder.
Best practice and code for new installations requires Line 1, Line 2, Neutral conductor and a ground condutor. It should be easy enough to pull a #10 ground wire in and connect it to the ground bar you plan on installing.

 

[MAX-24-Dean]

Yes, by that pic it appears there is no ground conductor going to a ground rod (or two by new code)

Good catch there. A bare #6 solid copper continuous conductor run to the ground rods and connected with acorn nuts to the ground rods. The ground conductor should not have any splices in it to meet code.
Install ground rods at least 6' apart.

 

[oosik]

When dealing with Mother Nature and electric fencers - you did your best. It's just the way things go. I lost one battery powered fencer to lightning. The ground was driven into the mud of the lake where the charger was located.

It blew the battery and charger to smithereens. Must have been close to a direct hit. Would have liked to seen it - wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere near it.

 

[Alan W.]

Are you assuming that lightning was the cause or does the charger show evidence of a hit.
The reason I ask is I have had that brand go bad twice for no reason. Bought another brand with no problems since.

 

[ponytug]

I lean toward the "it just died" theory. While an EMP from lightning could have caused the death, any set of electrical fence wires are a reasonable source of energy, even if you have a lightning diverter. Those are really designed to take the higher voltages, and energies. Basically, the pulse of electricity has to be high enough voltage to jump the spark gap to be diverted, and that leaves lots of jolts less than that for the charger to have to deal with.

My experience with EMPs is that if a "close" lightning hit was close enough to hit your electronics, the pulse leaves lots of burned / exploded pieces, and smoke behind, like @oosik's experience above.

I prefer solar powered battery based chargers. It just has never struck me as a great idea to wire up a big antenna for lightning and then wire it up to the barn/house via the fence charger. It just seemed to me that the concept was asking a lot of the lightning diverters.

Our chargers have two sets of grounds; one for the lightning diverter and one for the charger itself. We seem to get 7-8 years out of the chargers before the electronics go sideways; I have had two repaired, neither of which lasted more than a couple of years, but I think that is more a reflection of heat, humidity, and cycling on the capacitors and diodes. We get some lightning, but not much.

All the best,

Peter

 

[JD5210]

Thank you to everyone that took the time to look at my post and provide me with very useful information.

I attached a picture of what is on the pole. The transformer is at the top of pole, then the meter, then a 200A breaker, then a cable around to a 60A breaker on the pole, then wiring underground to the panel in the shed. All of this was here when I bought the place. There were 2 additional breaker boxes on the pole for the mobile home that was once back there, which I have removed.

Based on comments. I will buy a ground bus bar to install in the box in the shed, move the ground wires to it, install 2 ground poles 6 feet apart, 2 clamps and #6 wire to connect the ground bus bar to the ground poles.

If what I plan to do is in any way incorrect, please let me know.

 

[grsthegreat]

Looking at the panel inside building, i would consider this to fall under the old definition of a subpanel from years ago. In the past, subpanels were fed by 3 wires from main panel, and at the subpanel we drove 1 or 2 ground rods and attached that ground wire and the neutral to same neutral buss. Then attached all grounds and neutrals to same buss.

this method has not been allowed for some time. Nowdays you have to feed a subpanel with 4 wires from main panel, and keep neutral and ground separated in subpanel, with neutral buss isolated from ground.

there are millions upon millions of these panels still in use with no issues. I say drive a couple of ground rods and run a continuous #6 bare from neutral bus to both ground rods.

even when we do repairs to these older systems, electrical inspectors dont require us to repull 4 wire feeds. The panels just have to meet codes used at time panel was installed. Now if we replace panel, we have to upgrade to 4 wire runs between panels.

i also think charger just failed. Since i switched to Gallagher chargers, never had any more issues. I would think a lightning strike would have burnt up charger…a black smoldering mess of junk would have remained.

 

[JD5210]

Are you assuming that lightning was the cause or does the charger show evidence of a hit.
The reason I ask is I have had that brand go bad twice for no reason. Bought another brand with no problems since.

I took the charger apart and it showed no evidence of a hit.

 

[JD5210]

Looking at the panel inside building, i would consider this to fall under the old definition of a subpanel from years ago. In the past, subpanels were fed by 3 wires from main panel, and at the subpanel we drove 1 or 2 ground rods and attached that ground wire and the neutral to same neutral buss. Then attached all grounds and neutrals to same buss.

this method has not been allowed for some time. Nowdays you have to feed a subpanel with 4 wires from main panel, and keep neutral and ground separated in subpanel, with neutral buss isolated from ground.

there are millions upon millions of these panels still in use with no issues. I say drive a couple of ground rods and run a continuous #6 bare from neutral bus to both ground rods.

even when we do repairs to these older systems, electrical inspectors dont require us to repull 4 wire feeds. The panels just have to meet codes used at time panel was installed. Now if we replace panel, we have to upgrade to 4 wire runs between panels.

i also think charger just failed. Since i switched to Gallagher chargers, never had any more issues. I would think a lightning strike would have burnt up charger…a black smoldering mess of junk would have remained.

The sub panel in the shed is at least 35 to 40 years old. Why I think it was lightening, we had a storm the night before. My neighbor also had his charger die on the same day as mine. Our fences do not touch.