fluorescent lights tripping GFI breaker ???

[chevelless1]

I put fluorescent lights and outlets in my garage and there is a GFI breaker in the main panel for this circuit. When I leave the lights on for around 10 minutes the breaker trips. The outlets are fine when I run things......no tripping. I've read that flourescent lights and GFI breakers don't play well together. Any truth to this?

 

[pattenp]

Obvisually you have something going on there that's not right. I have seen comments about fluorescent lights not getting along with GFCI circuits. Did you put in corded light fixtures that plug into outlets that you placed in the ceiling? If so, I believe the 08 NEC requires all outlets to be GFCI. I believe if you hardwired the light fixtures on their own circuit, it can be non-GFCI.

 

[tfi racing]

How many lights on that circuit?Sounds more like an overload than a ground fault.More importantly,why are they on a GFI?

 

[chevelless1]

I have total of (10) 32 watt bulbs 320/120 = 2.6 amps. They are hard wired. They are on the GFI circuit because it was easy to tap into the one outlet in the existing garage to put the outlets and lights on the same circuit. Bringing over a seperate circuit just for the lights would be difficult. Maybe I can connect to a non GFI circuit somewhere or remove the GFI breaker and put in GFI outlets. The inspector OK'd it before I found this little problem. Only thing he said is that I would be pushing the circuit to its limits, but I don't see how...... 2.6 amps for the lights and I don't plan on running any heavy equipment.....compressors, etc.