I have recently fitted a few compact fluorescent lamps (Phillips Ecotone) in my house. When they are switched off, they occasionally flicker briefly. (First noticed a few days ago when I came home very late and crept upstairs in traditional husband manner without switching the light on).Is this normal - or a symptom of a horrendously expensive electrical fault? Charles
Sounds like some sort of fault, not necessarily electrical, could be RF in your wiring that causes it.
I am sure that others will expand on what I have wrote.
John.
Yep, creeping up the stairs late at night without switching on the lights is perfectly normal husband behaviour (welcome to the club).
Yes, many thanks for the tutorial in club behaviour! However, does anyone have an on-thread opinion about the fluorescent flicker? Thanks, Charles
In message on Wed, 3 Mar 2004, charles adams wrote
Hello, I've had this problem for a while with one bulb; I spoke to Philips technical help line who said that this happens from time to time with particular specimens of the bulb - change the bulb to a different one and it goes away. It occurs when the bulb is used in a two or multi-way switched environment and the rest of the explanation about voltage build up leading to the bulb thinking it was going to strike but then not was not, for me, very complete or convincing.
Regards, Colin
Possible- I guess the bulbs are very high resistance when off, so induced voltages won't dissipate. The unit then gets to the point where it sees 240V on the input and tries to switch on, but as soon as it draws current it loses the voltage. If so, shoving a resistor in excess of say half a megohm across the screw terminals in the light fitting would stop the flicker. With a light that shows repeatable flicker you could then increase the resistance to get the highest possible value (hence smallest waste current when on) that solves the problem.
Can anyone explain why, though?
If you're going to do this use a VR37 type resistor. These are the only products likely to survive being used in this application.
Regards Capitol
I'd guess this is voltage fed into the bulb, and rectified into DC to feed the storage capacitor (this is used to eliminate flicker). The leakage on this is probably well under a microamp. Any current over this will cause the capacitor to gradually be charged. Once it gets up to somewhere over a hundred volts or so, it'll try to start, but as it's only got the energy in the capacitor, and none more coming in, just flicker.
capacitive coupling. It happens more when the neutral is swithed instead of the live.
Regards, NT
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.