I purchased Sense to monitor the power quality of my home, due to flickering lights. I have read through many of the Power Quality posts and I’ve noticed that my voltage graphs typically look different from many of the other screenshots I see here. I consistently see 5-10V dips and spikes between L1 and L2, sometimes every few minutes. Interestingly though, the voltages stay within the normal thresholds. It just seems to be a bit noisy or dirty?
I have both reset my Sense as well as double checked the torque of all connections on the panel, so I was wondering if this is the quality of the power entering my home?
How was your issue detected?:
Flickering lights, occasionally several times per hour.
Did you noticed any other signs of this issue around your home?:
Lights flicker throughout the home, regardless of the type of bulb and which circuit they are on.
Screenshots from Sense Lab
I have included two screenshots from the last few months, but it looks like this every day.
June, 2024
August, 2024
These fluctuations are within the normal threshold however, and do not typically trigger a dip or spike.
Any ideas as to what could be causing this? Thank you.
Have you asked your electric service provider if they can explain the flickering? Is there anything noteworthy about your home’s electrical system? Older houses might have rubber insulation on wiring, etc.
In your screen captures, when L1 spikes down, it seems that L2 also spikes down. That is opposite the behavior of a floating neutral as described in the quote, so we can probably rule out a floating neutral.
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Hi Jeff, thanks for your response.
I did initially contact my utility service and the lineman pulled out my meter and plugged in a “Super Beast” service conductor tester, which checks for a floating neutral. He came to the same conclusion that you did, that there was no issue with the neutral. He wasn’t interested in exploring it further and left pretty quickly after that. I am open to having them come out again but I wanted to do some research first.
As for my home’s electrical system, the upstairs does have the original wiring (cloth w/ rubber insulation, but not K&T), but the rest of the house has been rewired w/ Romex. I’ve observed flickering on both cloth circuits and romex circuits and with several different brands of bulbs. The panel is also new. That’s why I initially wondered if it was the quality of the power coming in to the home.
Coincidentally, the day after I made this post I had the “cleanest” power quality graph yet. You can see the dips only occurred once or twice per hour. Like you said, it seems that both L1 and L2 spike down together.
But that only lasted a day.
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Do those dips coincide with your AC unit turning on? That’s a huge inrush load and the voltage can sag when that happens.
I decided to install a soft-start system on my heat pump to make the hits on my electric panel easier.
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Hey Edison, thanks for the tip but I did check and it does not coincide with my AC or any other large load on my end. I did wonder if it could be my neighbors though…
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