[pinballlooking]

After I trenched and installed the natural gas line and the electrical conduit for the greenhouse everything worked great. Then the first really hard rain the breaker to the solar array tripped. That had never happened before. I flipped it back but told my wife that I had crossed the power line to the barn/solar and wondered if I nicked the power lines.

Four months later this still had not happened again. But two nights ago it rained very hard the greenhouse sent me an email saying the greenhouse had lost power at 4 am. When I got up in went out to the greenhouse. It had tripped the 240 GFCI and the outlet GFCI was smoking in the greenhouse. I flipped the breaker to the greenhouse. The solar array was not producing power.

I got out my meter and checked the voltage one leg was 120 the other leg was 85 volts not good. The solar array said grid was not stable so it would not produce power.

I went to the cut off solar switch and power was good there. It is fused so I checked those to make sure they were not dropping power. They were good.
I dig up where I crossed the barn power lines it took about 10’ along the conduit to find it.

Sure enough I had clipped the two 120 lines the one line was just barely and the other was so bad it broke in two when I grabbed it. I bought a splice from Home depot I use some heat shrink over this fix with silicone over the sealed ends. I took foam1"1/2 insulation put some under the fix. The grooved a 1’ piece so the wires would be separated. I put a second piece above the fixed pieces. I used a can of spray foam to isolate and seal up the fix.

I also bought a 120 15 amp GFCI breaker for the greenhouse for better protection.

We are back to having power to the greenhouse and solar array working fine again.

I had a doctor apt in the morning so I just turned off the breaker to the greenhouse and went to the doc.
I did not get to look at this issue until about noon. By 3pm I had everything back up and running.