Flickering LED spotlights

Apr 13, 2018 6 Replies

Hi All,



We have had a couple of rooms worth of LED down lighters installed (12 in one room and 4 in the other) (Both on MK dimmer switches).



Occasionally they flicker. I suspect this is either when the CH thermostat kicks in/out, or the fridge stat does the same.



Is this normal behaviour for this kind of lighting? Or does it indicate a fault?



TIA



Chris


IME it's not uncommon, and is probably normal. When I had a single phase 7kW electric pottery kiln the lights would flicker momentarily when the power relay kicked in, and I've also noticed it with items drawing much less current. I think the eye is quite sensitive to these sorts of things.

I used to have this on my old house whenever the microwave kicked in, but swappng the pole mounted transformer for a massive garden mounted substation fixed it.

It is an indication of a high impedance supply.

Used to happen on a long run to my old shed when i could see, when the fan heater cut in. I'd have expected though that if these were led and fed from a stable supply than this should be handled by the psu surely?

Brian

Apart from the fact that most LEDs are likely to have the cheapest unregulated supply possible, we are told these are dimmable LEDs which will be designed for variable brightness with supply voltage.

I dunno just how dimmable LEDs actually work. But with a SMPS inside them, may not actually react to voltage variation within its parameters.

But not in the OPs case. The CH or fridge is not a big enough load to cause this behaviour.

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