Patent ID: 8618811

Claim:
An arc fault circuit interrupter test circuit comprising: i. a full-wave bridge rectifier accepting a hot line of an electrical system and a neutral line of an electrical system and generating a positive line and a negative line; ii. at least one power transistor coupled to the positive line of said full-wave bridge rectifier and to the negative line of said full-wave bridge rectifier, and adapted to electrically couple said positive line and said negative line when operated; iii. a voltage sense circuit coupled to the hot line of the electrical system and the neutral line of the electrical system for sensing an AC voltage waveform; iv. a current sense circuit for sensing current flow through said power transistor; v. a controller coupled to the voltage sense circuit, the current sense circuit, and to said power transistor, said controller adapted to generate a sequence of control pulses for operating said power transistor and coupling said positive line to said negative line, thereby generating a fault, wherein the controller is adapted to generate each control pulse at a specific voltage of the AC voltage waveform, and further adapted to measure a current generated by each control pulse and compare the current to a predetermined level, and when the current is less than the predetermined level, the controller is adapted to generate a next control pulse at a higher voltage level of the AC voltage waveform.