LEDs are not equal

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ptonsparky

ptonsparky

Tom
Location
NE (9.06 miles @5.9 Degrees from Winged Horses)
Occupation
EC - retired
We did a small apartment building next door to the shop a couple years ago.

The owners son lives in one of the units and told us that when he changes the speed via the wall control for the living room fan the LEDs in the Kitchen Dining area blink. Same circuit. It has been doing it for a while but he just got around to telling us. He doesn't change speeds very often so it was not a high priority concern.

The LED lamps that came with the Fan were not affected. Two other mfg of lamps would flicker, a third would not. Incandesents would not.
CH surge suppressor in the panel did no good. The standby snubbers we have on hand worked. The 130 volt reduced the flicker to about once every 15 switch cycles. The 120v removed all flicker. During testing the speed control was in or replaced with a simple switch for testing.

Just something to think about.
 
It is definitely true that not all led's are created equal... We try and stay with philips as we haven't had issue with them
 
Had one a while back where certain fixtures would blink, turned out all were the same manufacturers LEDs.

Roger
 
ptonsparky said:
We did a small apartment building next door to the shop a couple years ago.

The owners son lives in one of the units and told us that when he changes the speed via the wall control for the living room fan the LEDs in the Kitchen Dining area blink. Same circuit. It has been doing it for a while but he just got around to telling us. He doesn't change speeds very often so it was not a high priority concern.

The LED lamps that came with the Fan were not affected. Two other mfg of lamps would flicker, a third would not. Incandesents would not.
CH surge suppressor in the panel did no good. The standby snubbers we have on hand worked. The 130 volt reduced the flicker to about once every 15 switch cycles. The 120v removed all flicker. During testing the speed control was in or replaced with a simple switch for testing.

Just something to think about.
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Did you put the snubber across the fan controller or across the fan load?
 
One thing I did notice last week was the K rating. About 5 years ago we replaced CFL with LED trim into the cans we had in the basement. I think 2700 k was all that were available or maybe I wanted that warmer color. IDR. Last week we finished the ceiling in the small kitchen and installed mousetrap fixtures with adjustable ratings. The 2700 k matches that of the originals.
 
In a commercial environment I have found certain brands have a high inrush current. One customer’s breakers would trip almost every morning when the EMS would turn on the displays. Breakers would reset without issue the rest of the day. Load was around 4-6 amps. This customer uses Square D QOB breakers on a lot of their stores, and that’s the only ones that had that issue. Turns out, Square D breakers are designed with a lower magnetic trip threshold than others, changed breakers to QOBHM models, no more problems. But instead of changing all the stores to the HM breaker, they opted to split the load in half with more circuits to solve the issue.
 
hillbilly1 said:
In a commercial environment I have found certain brands have a high inrush current. One customer’s breakers would trip almost every morning when the EMS would turn on the displays. Breakers would reset without issue the rest of the day. Load was around 4-6 amps. This customer uses Square D QOB breakers on a lot of their stores, and that’s the only ones that had that issue. Turns out, Square D breakers are designed with a lower magnetic trip threshold than others, changed breakers to QOBHM models, no more problems. But instead of changing all the stores to the HM breaker, they opted to split the load in half with more circuits to solve the issue.
Click to expand...
AFAIK that lower magnetic trip is only on standard single pole 15 and 20 amp breakers, possibly includes 25 and 30 but only single pole units. I think Homeline series also does this.

If you happen to use multiwire circuits on two or three pole breakers you won't have the lower magnetic trip level.
 
kwired said:
AFAIK that lower magnetic trip is only on standard single pole 15 and 20 amp breakers, possibly includes 25 and 30 but only single pole units. I think Homeline series also does this.

If you happen to use multiwire circuits on two or three pole breakers you won't have the lower magnetic trip level.
Click to expand...
Correct, I had a customer move a bearing press from one end of the garage to next to the panel, breaker would trip every time, plug it into a 100’ extension cord, and it would work fine. They wanted to change the breaker to a 30 amp feeding the 20r receptacle, but I done some research , and found out about the HM breakers.Changed the breaker, no more tripping.
 
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