Chance Family Christmas Light Show Posted December 10, 2018 Posted December 10, 2018 I am concerned that the lights in my house flicker when my light show is playing. I am worried. Should I be?
a31ford Posted December 10, 2018 Posted December 10, 2018 I would be... how many lights ? in your show. house lights flickering implies neutral issues, or high draw of load from the lights...
Speedster Posted December 10, 2018 Posted December 10, 2018 I had that same problem occasionally in 2015 with a different lighting system. Our kitchen lights would flicker and I was concerned that the refrigerator's circuitry & components would get damaged. I switched to mostly LEDs in 2016 and didn't have that problem. But when I decided to switch to LOR last year I knew I'd have even more lights. So I decided to call an electrician so I'd have a separate circuit specifically for our outdoor lights. You might want to do the same.
Orville Posted December 10, 2018 Posted December 10, 2018 That's not a good sign, it means you are probably over the amperage limit on the circuit you're drawing from. Are you turning on every light on every controller at the same time when this occurs, or is it only when specific lights are on? If specific lights, you may want to reduce the number of lights on that controllers channel{s} and separate them to other controllers {if possible} or add a new controller, but if it's a sequence or sequences where you have every light on at the same time on all controllers{then adding a new controller WILL NOT alleviate this issue}, then you will need to redo the sequence or sequences and not have every light on at the same time{again, if this is what might be creating the whole house lights flickering issue}. This should help some, until you can get a separate circuit put in for just the outside lighting.
TheDucks Posted December 10, 2018 Posted December 10, 2018 Something is wrong. LEDs just don't have what it takes (REACTANCE) to cause this. When a high reactance load is applied, it skews the power factor, which might be visible while the Transformer on the pole reacts. AC induction Motors and transformers are Inductive. Modern power supplies are Capacitive. (Your cheap LED supplies are Capacative: Un- PF compensated. Look at the price of a 'LED Ballast') , but the worst would be when you plugged those in. Commercial buildings go to great pains to balance (correct) the power factors,stagger startup loads (saves money on their bill)
Mscannic Posted December 18, 2018 Posted December 18, 2018 Happened to us we had led bulbs but standard dimmer switches and we noticed it only happened on led lights w dimmer switch. Changed out dimmers to led dimmers. Also we did have separate circuits installed but that didn’t help til we changed out the dimmer switches. Typically only happened when shimmer or twinkle was on.
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