Houselights flickering in unison (LEDs, different switches)

Forums › Home Workshop DIY › Houselights flickering in unison (LEDs, different switches)

mdf

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#299327 29-Aug-2022 19:15

We've got recessed LED downlights with separate drivers. They've just recently started flickering. It's pretty erratic - a bit of flickering then fine for ~5 minutes. Weirdly, 10 lights are all flickering in unison, across 4 different switches in 2 rooms. I'm pretty sure they're all on the same circuit-breaker.

I appreciate the answer to this will be "phone an electrician" (which I will do) but just wanted to see if there are any thoughts as to what might be causing this. And how much I might be up for fixing it. Can one faulty driver cause a cascading issue like this across a whole lot of lights? Loose wire in the fuse box? Neightbours with an EMP?

gregmcc

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#2960915 29-Aug-2022 19:44

a loose wire somewhere in the circuit......I'm gonna say it......call and electrician

keep in mind the flickering is a high resistance point....this is a heat build up.....potentially a fire hazard, don't ignore this and hope it goes away.

msukiwi

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#2960964 29-Aug-2022 20:16

This was the first symptom of a loose incoming wire in the pole fuse. Low current caused the symptom. Oven, washing machine etc were fine.

Eventually my UPS (x2) would randomly beep multiple times as well. Power Company went straight to the pole and found the problem, so it must be quite common.

(Didn't even come in the gate)

mdf

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#2960972 29-Aug-2022 20:40

msukiwi:

This was the first symptom of a loose incoming wire in the pole fuse. Low current caused the symptom. Oven, washing machine etc were fine.

Eventually my UPS (x2) would randomly beep multiple times as well. Power Company went straight to the pole and found the problem, so it must be quite common.

(Didn't even come in the gate)

Thanks! We're in Wellington (south coast) so I absolutely would not be surprised if the weather of the last while has done something!

Bung

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#2960973 29-Aug-2022 20:40

Another vote for pole fuse. In our case the lights would flicker whenever the microwave or a stove element cycled on.

mdf

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#2960984 29-Aug-2022 21:40

How does an issue with a pole fuse get diagnosed? Still an electrician or something else?

msukiwi

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#2960992 29-Aug-2022 21:53

mdf:How does an issue with a pole fuse get diagnosed? Still an electrician or something else?

I phoned the Power Company and explained the symptoms and they came within an hour, no electrician involved in my case.

Good response and result from Orion in my case.

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bagheera

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#2961049 30-Aug-2022 08:49

We had this, turned out it was next door neighbor using his arc welder, got the power company to swap phase, and no issue. (no cost to us)

nbroad

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#2961057 30-Aug-2022 09:44

Sorry for the thread hijack, but I have a similar issue... sort of..

New garage fed with about 15 metres of 6mm cable from the house main switchboard on a 32 amp MCB.

I have 4 Phillips LED battens and a infrared heater... like the as seen on TV ones, but a cheaper version from Trade Depot.

When I run the heater, I notice a very tiny, barely detectable flicker in the lighting. So small that only I really notice it out the corner of my eye.

The heater has 3 power levels, level 3 being around 2 kw, and the flicker becomes more noticeable as you move from level 1 to 2, then 3.

Lighting is on 1 mm TPS and heater 2.5 mm TPS.

I'm pretty sure everything is tight as I watched my old (registered but retired) electrician shaking away as he connected everything and cranked it all tight :-)

Not a big issue, but just interested in any opinions. It could just be the cheap heater?

Cheers

msukiwi

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#2961066 30-Aug-2022 10:24

Is the heater plug in?

If so, try a "normal" fan heater instead. If it still happens then it is probably load related.

If not then it is probably the Trade Depot heater! I'm surprised anything from there actually works as expected!

nbroad

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#2961072 30-Aug-2022 10:31

msukiwi:

Is the heater plug in?

yep, it's plug in... I'll try a fan heater on the same circuit, thanks

neb

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#2961294 30-Aug-2022 20:31

For people who want to get obsessive about this, Google PZEM-16, it's a module the monitors mains frequency and voltage (and other things as well, but for power quality frequency and voltage are the big things), talks Modbus through a Modbus USB protocol converter from which you can feed it to whatever you want, for example an Adafruit dashboard. There's one set up at the Casa to alert us to anything funny going on in the mains power, e.g. a neighbour losing their neutral connection as happened a few years back which caused the line voltage to sag to 180V or so at random times.

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richms

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#2961310 30-Aug-2022 20:59

A friend was having this with their house and it was the crap dimmable LED downlights reacting to distorted power because of all the non sinusoidal loads that a modern house has in it. In their case it was when the induction stove and heatpump were on it seemed to cause something to happen that made the lights pulse at about 0.5Hz which they called a flicker. This was ontop of the 100Hz actual flicker that they had because they were junk builder grade downlights.

Oddly, the few on dimmers were not affected.

Richard rich.ms

FailedWOF

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#2961344 30-Aug-2022 23:36

Ripple control can also cause flickering in cheap unfiltered LED lights/drivers. Usually the dimmable types seem to be affected the most.

If the flickering happens randomly without a pattern it’s probably not that. But if it happens around same time each day, it could be worth looking at filters or upgrading to better quality downlights/drivers. I recall there was a thread on here a while back discussing this issue with some options to fix. You could record the times it happens and call your lines company to see those match up with their ripple signals.