Weird house electrical problem

Interesting. I wanted to borrow an oscilloscope to see if the transformer (actually it's long distance from the house) was creating my LED flicker...

 

A sillyscope is fun, because it lets you see things like how much noise your electronics are dumping into your electrical circuits, but it probably won’t help you find your issue.

The Suretest gadget puts load on circuits. That’s the only way to find xformer problems. What you have to look for is voltage drop below NEC specs under load.

 

Oof! So much to respond to!

"Side" of the panel is irrelevant. Phases alternate vertically, so the top breaker on each side is the A phase, next ones down B phase, next A, so on. Take note of the affected circuits are all on one phase or the other.

Floating neutral. Not floating ground. The neutral is the grounded conductor, not the grounding conductor. Easy diagnosis on that is to check phase to phase voltage and phase to neutral voltages. If you see a discrepancy between phases of but they add up to your phase to phase voltage you've got a poor neutral connection. Seen that one screw up a few electricians who aren't strong at troubleshooting.

TZ, sounds like a capacitance issue, which is very common in LED lighting. Shaving fractions of a cent off each lamp by using the absolute minimum spec capacitor for ideal power conditions, which is pretty much non-existent in North America...see IWS's post above.

IWS, I'm in the middle of unfucking the work of an "electrician"...got a call from a real estate agent I have done work for to "get power connected" because the "electrician" who wired this place got himself arrested on a DUI. Uh-huh. From the moment I got there it was obvious this was not the work of anyone who should be on a construction site picking up nails, much less picking up a tool.

Had a lighting supplier call me about another project he was having issues on, LED tube retrofit in a 277v lighting circuit, they were experiencing intermittent failures upwards of 30%. Told them a month of power quality metering on the affected circuits and the mains was likely the only way to figure out why they're failing and discover the root cause. Still haven't gotten the go-ahead to hook up and start recording. Hard to justify the cost for the meter when I can rent one for $600/month and have only had cause to use one three times in the past 8 years...

And don't even ask about the academic exercise I just went through for a machine supplier over spec'ing phase converters for a 48kVA machine they were trying to sell a guy...would have taken 300A of single phase power and $15k in phase converters and a fractional tap transformer to make work!

 

Cheap driver components are the first cause you should look at. Not all LED’s are created equal.

 

Derp. You're correct..I remember that each breaker has that little crossover. What I remembered correctly though was that one leg was out. And taking out the breakers made it obvious..it's a quick check just to start.

We had a lutron system that auto dimmed at certain times of the day running this illuminated led wall. It was making people in the office sick. Turned out it was doing this weird phasing frequency thing at certain levels. I think we ended up taking out the dimmers to get it eventually stop. Some engineered thing from some lighting company. When you looked at it through your camera phone it was crazy looking.

 

Yeah, I try not to deal in architectural lighting. Everyone expects things to work like incandescent did, and they just don't. No one wants to pay for diagnostic designing and mitigation, and I don't feel like pissing away all that time chasing a solution that doesn't exist. Put me in the warehouse putting in high bays and machine hookups.

 

We we're working for an investment firm relating the king of Saudi Arabia. The money was unquestionably there. The option of tearing everything out wasn't. What's great was I had to break the news to them that infact LEDs do not last forever and that the do infact change color over time. After 5 years of being constantly on, the started getting weird colors to them. The GC was DC. The sub was it of Toronto. I did the install. Neat place looking right over the Potomac. Hand woven solid gold drapes in the conference room. Place was bonkers.

 

I appreciate that you have the desire to care about this kind of stuff. Sadly, most of your "colleagues" don't. They are often worse than useless, and I have a very dim view of your profession as a result. I was just a homeowner, who found that he could not rely on supposed professionals in any way.

For me, the expensive circuit analyzer turned to be a great investment, even though it saw only a short period of use. As I said, none of the idtio bubbas in my region even knew such a thing existed, even the ones who styled themselves as "Master Electricians."

I had about a $1/4M worth of AV electronics in a home theater, and the electrical problems caused me to lose a $15,000 multichannel Mark Levinson amplifier due to the xformer undersize. The utility did not give a crap, of course. They felt they had no responsibility for "consumer electronics," or convenience lighting, or any other "minor" electrical appliance.

The rework I did on the whole house meant that the utility could not blame internal wiring as the source of the faults, and the circuit analyzer showed that they were starving my "major" appliances such as HVAC, refrigerators, and washer/dryer. They were on the hook for replacement if I could prove that their installation could damage those items through failure to conform to NEC. That was they only thing they cared about.

They had ignored or dismissed my problems for a year, but I wrote a letter detailing my work with the circuit analyzer, and included the model # and the results of my tests. Suddenly, I had an army of utility workers in my yard, and the transformer was replaced with a much bigger one three days after they received my letter

 

Yeah, it's ridiculous what the utils set for transformers sometimes. Job I'll be working on this coming week, a printing and product customization company, we built out a couple years ago. Lasted about 9 months before the util's transformer blew out. This was a six unit commercial space, 8k sq ft per unit...they set a 75kVA transformer to service all six units!

This is a small example of some of the hack shit I found in this other job I was describing earlier...

 

Well, not really....I was asking just cuz if both were on the same leg (opposing one another) I'd be somewhat suspect if his main was going bad..... that's all.

 

Interesting, make sense.

I tried a few different brands of LEDs and got the same results. Are there any brands to look for?

Should I head to the local electronic store and buy some capacitors to install on every lighting circuit?....

 

SMH. That is just dumb.

 

I'd start bitching at the util to get you cleaner power. I suspect your service is being underpowered.

If keeping it in house is what you want, I'd get a capacitor bank for the whole service.

 

Yeah. I was in disbelief when my buddy who works for the util ran the transformer and address info and told me.

 

Considering the transformer (I am alone on it) is more than 150 yards away, perhaps I'll whine on them first.



Thanks.

 

I went thru the panel yesterday, checked every screw, nothing loose, a few I got an 1/8 of a turn on, not on either of the 2 that are bothering. Haven't dug into the outlets yet.

 

Well I finally found the problem, after not finding anything in the house and not having any issues for months last night we lose power to half the house. Only have power coming in on one leg, meter box is bad, been arcing for a while. Electrician is on the way, got my check book ready.

 

you're on the hook for the meter? or is it the panel that's bad?