Lights dimming or flickering

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mike33

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Irvine, CA
I went on a call for either "lights dimming" or "flickering". The info is not too clear to me. Owner had POCO look at it and they said there was a copper to aluminum connection that was failing. I looked and couldn't find what he was talking about. No one was home so we will try to get more info tomorrow.

While inspecting I replaced one loose breaker, but it's not a lighting circuit. And I measured the current after the meter. L1 7.3A. L2 9.1A. and N 5A. Even at these low numbers, is the imbalance any indication of a problem?
 
flickering lights

flickering lights

seen this problem a few times and it was found to be a loose neutral on line side of main
 
you need to check voltage not amps. Current will change with bad connection, but you will not see the problem as readily as when you see the voltage fluctuating.
 
lights dimming

lights dimming

you can test the voltages at the main disconnect with full load , it should be ballanced, unballanced may indicate loose neutral on the utility side.
 
My coworker went back and apparently the problem stopped after I replaced the breaker.
The copper to aluminum was the factory lug before the meter. There is some corrosion but it didn't look like an issue to me. The neutral bus looked worse. This house is right on the beach so everything gets a lot of weather abuse.

IMG_2495.jpgIMG_2496.jpgIMG_2489.jpg
 
mike33 said:
The copper to aluminum was the factory lug before the meter. There is some corrosion but it didn't look like an issue to me. The neutral bus looked worse. This house is right on the beach so everything gets a lot of weather abuse.
Click to expand...

From the pictures, I would say that is a singularly bad place for aluminum (or copper for that matter.) :)
 
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