Hi folks!
Would love to hear any thoughts on what I’ve been experiencing. As a new user, I’ve shared some links to Google Photos instead to be able to share more content.
How was your power issue detected?
So… a bit of background:
A year ago, in April 2023, our new-build home (1500 sq.ft. townhouse) was completed. We moved in May 2023.
Within the first few days, we noticed a few odd electrical-related things:
- lights were occasionally flickering
- dryer breaker kept tripping (turns out the receptacle was installed poorly and it was arcing)
- when we had some TP-Link Kasa smart switches installed, we discovered that the electricians put in dead-end three-way circuits, which I’m pretty sure isn’t to Code (In British Columbia, at the time of construction, adopted code was Canadian Electrical Code, Part I, 25th Edition, Safety Standard for Electrical Installations, Canadian Standards Association Standard C22.1-21)
Then in June 2023, we suddenly noticed significant electrical issues (excuse the messy home in the videos attached):
- LED lights flickering
- fans cycling on/off and lamps dimming
- HVAC controller was power-cycling constantly
- UPSes were clicking constantly
- …and seemingly all 240V appliances were inoperable
We ended up having the main electrical line serving our townhouse (from a shared meter room) cut and half of it replaced, with new conduit run around the building as the original cable was buried in slab at grade - with a new junction box added to the back of an inadequately protected accessible parking sign post to connect the new half of the cable with the old half from the meter room (…you really can’t make this stuff up).
The more significant symptoms went away, but I still had odd issues pop up:
- our UPSes would occasionally click on and off
- LED lights would still flicker, albeit rarely
- our living room TV would occasionally glitch (power cycling by itself, display errors that needed to be corrected with factory reset, etc.)
- mobility scooter battery failed without explanation and unable to accept a charge any longer
So I bought a Wiser Energy-branded Sense unit to see if anything might come of it. For the first while, things seemed normal.
Then, later on, I noticed the power quality issues showing up in Sense Labs:
Screenshots from Sense Lab
Here are Sense Labs graph screenshots of each day over the past while
I’ve also aggregated the data downloaded over the past while into a spreadsheet (date and time edited into separate columns rather than the default timestamp as downloaded):
Power Quality Data.xlsx (158.4 KB)
Here’s a screenshot of what the page currently shows:
Where I’m at…
Now, given the history of electrical problems, I definitely am inclined to question crappy electrical work (and likely will push me to ask for a full replacement all the way to the meter room).
But there also are are a few things I noticed in the data which have me questioning whether these are actual power quality issues or an issue with the Sense unit itself:
- April 19 ~5pm through April 20 ~6am, the voltage graph suddenly looked “normal” with no user intervention
- April 22 over the early morning, Sense seemed to have suddenly stopped recording data, however it seems that a reboot resolved that issue (but it didn’t do anything to change the dips/spikes observed on the graph after the data came back online)
- on April 28 (earlier in the day as this post) just after midnight, I installed additional CTs to monitor two dedicated circuits…ever since then the graph this morning has looked “normal” (although the raw data itself has recorded a few events this morning that don’t appear depicted in the graph)
Or maybe it’s a bit of both? Or maybe something else not-yet-diagnosed in the wiring throughout the home? Or maybe an appliance has been malfunctioning? shrugs
Would love to hear everyone’s thoughts!
EDIT 04/29: Corrected hyperlink to the video showing HVAC controller cycling and made some minor edits for clarity.
I’m now simultaneously halfway-down an energy efficiency rabbit hole. Being the keener that I am, silly me decided to splurge on an independent energy assessment to gather more info… Surprise! Ridiculous numbers like 8.18 air changes per hour on a blower door test at 50 pascals, and definitely lots to question about the windows and insulation. (Can’t say I’m too shocked given the other issues we’ve had with stuff like electrical… but still kind of ridiculous given that this was completed in 2023 to requirements based on 2018 BC Building Code with some supposed additional layers municipally-mandated energy requirements/considerations.)