I have track lighting in my kitchen with three lights on it. I recently put in some of the flouresent bulbs that fit in incandesent sockets, thwy work fine. However, I have noticed that after I switch the light off, the middle light will flash every 5 seconds or so. And only one tube of the flouresent bulb.
Maybe it is picking up some stray current running through a wire close by.
The only thing I can think of.. ( a long shot) is that I had installed a new swith that lights up when the lights are switched off. Somehow some electricity is getting to the light through the switch. But Why only one tube of the light. I have yet to get up there with a meter and do some testing. I'll post the results
Not so long a shot.
Turn off lightswitch. Unscrew all the lights. Does the switch still light up? Probably not.
The little neon bulb in the switch has something like a 90,000 ohm resistor in series with it, and this series combination is in turn in parallel with the switch contacts. When the contacts are open, current flows from the hot through the neon bulb (making it light up), through the 90K resistor and through the 12 to 500 ohms worth of lighting equipment (typical 25 to 1000 watts incandescent) eventually to ground. If you remove the load (unscrew the lightbulbs) then the circuit is no longer completed and the neon should go out. (Sometimes capacitance in the wiring allows the bulb to glow a bit even if there's no load.)
Converse is that when you turn off the switch, a small current still flows through the neon bulb into the load. This probably slowly charges a capacitor in the electronic ballast in the compact fluorescent bulb(s). When the capacitor voltage hits a threshold, the ballast "thinks" it's being powered and tries to start the bulb. The capacitor discharges because the current flowing through the neon is insufficient to power the ballast. Then the cycle repeats.
Make sure one of your bulbs is incandescent and this problem will probably disappear.
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