New home, freshly built.
In the evenings when we are settled in the living room with the lights on the AC will cycle on and the led lights flicker. If the kitchen lights are on they do it too.

The builder warranty guy sent the electrician who wired the home by today. (Well his helper) and he says-the AC draws a lot of electricity and it would flicker regardless if the lights were leds or fluorescent (I asked what about incandescent-kid just blinked at me).

So he says the only thing he can do is check to see if all the breakers are attached well, check the neutrals and he attempted to screw down every breaker and screw with wire under it.

Does this seem right? Should he have checked the ground outside by the meter too?

Maybe try a hard start capacitor on the AC. I'm not a residential electrician, but maybe they should have a dedicated circuit for the AC if it's making the lights flicker. Checking connections makes sense. Are the LED's on a dimmer?

Yes to loose wiring.
Yes to running hard start cap. (or a diminished traditional cap)

The ground rods has nothing to do with normal current flow, only shunting ground faults, surges or lightning strikes.

The correctly wired panel takes care of current flow.

In your breaker panel:
What's the amp-rating of the main breaker?
What's the amp rating of the AC breaker?

You might need your Power Provider to check their service to your house.

quote:

Originally posted by bdylan:
Maybe try a hard start capacitor on the AC. I'm not a residential electrician, but maybe they should have a dedicated circuit for the AC if it's making the lights flicker. Checking connections makes sense. Are the LED's on a dimmer?

A soft starter perhaps, but a hard start would likely make the problem worse.

Doesn’t sound right for a 200A house. We’ve got about 20 recessed ceiling fixtures all with LED R30 bulbs and if there were any flickering with AC startup, we would have noticed it long ago. There’s none. Might be overly sensitive cheap chinese bulbs. Try a few different brands in some of the fixtures and see if you notice any improvement.

Just checked, the house is a 200amp home.
The ac is n its own circuit and it’s a 35amp breaker

Is it just the A/C that makes the lights Flicker ? If so , have somebody check the starting current on the unit and also the voltage drop on the bus in the panel.

^this is what I need. Thanks. I’m gonna call the warranty guy on Monday and see if the AC guys can come out and check if it’s their gear and not the electrical

I'd start with the power company. Possibly a loose neutral. An electrician can put an amp clamp on the A/C wiring and see if the compressor is over amping as well. A final check would be for voltage drop when A/C turns on. If you check and L1 and L2 behave differently when load is applied it's a loose/damaged neutral for sure.

We have a 5 ton AC unit for a 2400 sq. ft. house. The tag on it shows 35 AMP breaker to be the minimum up to a 60 AMP. The AC guy put in a 50 AMP and it works very well. There has never been a flicker anywhere. Not saying that is the problem just something to look at if all else fails.

I have a flicker when an "inductive load" such as an electrical motor starts. These starting currents are high, and try as I can, nothing seems to fix. I've checked power through the power company, checked all the neutrals at the box, and validated all outlets are correctly wired hot - neutral - ground. Let us know if you all find a solution!

Lights dimming on HVAC startup is not unusual, but… Check your voltage. I had a customer that had this for ~20 years. Sometimes line voltage to the house would dip to 110 volts, the power company actually put a grafting meter on it for a week and watched it. not good but with in spec. Power company would not do anything. Finally, the transformer went out and was replaced. End of problem! I have a 400 amp service in my five time all electric steel flickers the lights very very slightly, rarely anyone notices. One factor is the underground line from The Pole is a couple hundred feet or more long. Most services here run to 125/250v.

We have a 3 ton heat pump on a 200 amp panel and never have any flickering…

I did however have a soft start installed on my heat pump to minimize the LRA and subsequent noise at start up as the outdoor unit is close to the mbdrm windows (which is stupid!).

I second contacting your power provider and having them check the service wires to your meeter or possible bad transformer with multiple homes that it services.

Had this problem at my MIL home years ago. Her service was over head and after 40 plus years of it swinging in the wind it broke the neutral connection at the transformer.
I checked every breakers screw connection in the panel before calling them. Took them about 15mins to cut the cable and put another lug on.
Solved all her erratic light flickering.

I had a similar flickering problem with my kitchen overhead "can" lights. Turned out to be a bad LED bulb in one of the fixtures. Apparently, the LED in-bulb circuitry had gone nuts over time. Replacing the bulb made the problem go away. The moral of the story: suspect anything in the circuit that has electronics in it.

In my case, the offending bulb was a cheap one from China, in addition, another bulb in the same batch purchase exhibited an identical issue, making two out of eight that were faulty. I discarded them all, and found some on Amazon (still from China) that are working just fine. If anyone is interested in specific brand information, etc. e-mail me.

That's a good start. A lose connection in either the wiring to the dedicated disconnect or a lose connection in the compressor unit can causes excessive draw.

If everything checks out a soft start capaciter may solve your problem. Since you have a new system all the motors should be VFD compatible. If not you will need to change the compressor motor as well.

quote:

Originally posted by MikeinNC:
^this is what I need. Thanks. I’m gonna call the warranty guy on Monday and see if the AC guys can come out and check if it’s their gear and not the electrical