flickering lights

[ptonsparky]

OP, you may need to hire some help or work more hours to get all the suggested testing done. Sounds like you may have some spare time snowed in this weekend. Maybe even a lot of POCO flickering. Get those testers set up now while you still have power.

 

[growler]

Happy New Year everyone! I have an issue at my house that I haven't been able to solve and I was curious if any of you had any thoughts. I've lived in my house about 5 years now and my lights have always flickered and I cannot figure out why.

Thank you for the responses everyone. All the lights in the house flicker not dim. Lights that are not on dimmers and lights on dimmers do it. LED, incandescent, and halogen.

a. Do you have an induction cooktop, or run your microwave oven at less than full power setting? Those appliances control lower power simply by switching on and off at a 1 Hz or so rate. Even some non-induction electric cooktops cycle power on and off for power settings vs. the old method of just changing the element connections.

b If the flicker is longer than 1 second cycling rate, even coffee pots can cause flicker.

I was wondering the same thing. Do the lights flicker constantly or just when other loads are on? Or do they only flicker at cetain times of day or night?

I would start to troubleshoot by turning everything off except one circuit for lights (hopefully lights that I could see from the panel) and make sure that's they only things that's on. If there is no flickering at that time I would slowly turn on other circuits until the flickering starts.

I have a temp receptacle in a box on a short section of Romes that I can hook up for temp power. If I were to hook that up at the panel on the only circuit that's on and then plug in a lamp that flickers I would would be calling the power company.

No matter what you try you do have to isolate the problem a bit farther than the lights are flickering. If everything is tight in the panel then what about the meter base? Even the meter can be bad.

 

[gar]

180104-1025 EST

sparky1118:

Happy New Year everyone! I have an issue at my house that I haven't been able to solve and I was curious if any of you had any thoughts. I've lived in my house about 5 years now and my lights have always flickered and I cannot figure out why. They do it with every type of light bulb I install. I've installed two new ground rods outside figuring it was a grounding issue. I've redone from the service drop to the panel. I called Eversource (utility company) and told them the issue and they installed a new drop. But nothing is helping with the problem. Then grounds and neutrals are all tight and look fine. I've changed all the devices in my house and I still can't fix the issue. No one else around me is having the same issue. :?

First, grounding is not your problem.

Second, we assume flickering is what others have described as flickering.

Third, "no one else has this problem" is important to truly determine.

Fourth, "my lights" in the above context implies every single light in your home. This says the problem is at, in, or before your main panel.

Fifth, "every type of light bulb" at least implies a moderate duration of voltage change, and possibly a moderately large change in voltage. With a Cree 9 W LED on a steady state basis I need to go below 100 V to start to see dimming effects from change of sine wave voltage. Also did a quick check on a Costco 4' twin tube shop light. It was relatively constant from 100 to 130 V. If you see flicker on a Cree LED I would expect to see a large voltage change. At this point I have not run any pulsed voltage change tests. Around 80 V is where the Cree and Costco started to dim.

If you have Cree 9 W bulbs and they flickered, then you have a very large voltage change.

Sixth, you need to do my two incandescent bulb test at the main panel. This will quickly indicate if you have a neutral problem. You have never indicated whether some bulbs get brighter when flicker occurs. Nor have you indicated the time between flickering, or duration of flickering.

Seventh, from my experience, in one case, I do not trust power companies to meter and detect problems. Because they did not believe there was a problem they lost two transformers. I have no idea what their logging meter told them.

Eighth, could you ever draw any correlation between flickering and motors turning on. My refrigerators, furnaces, washing machines, etc. do not cause noticeable flicker. They might if they were on the same circuit. My neighbor's air conditioner does cause me flicker. Just a momentary intensity change.

If you have an oscillating flicker, then it is likely a loose connection. A single momentary change is likely a motor load, or large incandescent load being turned on.

.

 

[kwired]

Place heavy load on circuit(s) in question, like a 1000w + load, watch what voltage does while loaded. Watch what other line to neutral voltage does if you have concerns over neutral integrity.

Watch for coincidental voltage sags that happen same time other loads start. If all connections are in good condition and this is what is happening you may have too long of a service drop/feeder for size of conductor or even too small of a transformer to deliver the surge being asked for. Multiple customers on same transformer - can be too small of transformer but somebody else's load is what draws voltage down.