I read a few prior posts on the subject of lights flickering across the entire house. That is what I am experiencing. A couple of observations first. The problem is only noticable at night when the lights are on. We do not lose power so all digital clocks and appliances continue to operate. I am not sure that I could say with confidence that the problem exists at other times of day since it is only the lights that flicker and even them not as bad as "on-off" but really just a flicker. All appliances have operated uninterrupted.

Prior posts offered advice about having the electrical system checked but I am not sure who to call first. I could call the electric company but I don't want to pay them for something that is not on their side of the line. If I call an electrician, he will bill me just to point his finger at the electric company.

Since the problem is house-wide, I am inclined to call the electric company first. How would you vote?

- Peter

 

Call the PoCo, they'll check their side for tight connections or other issues. No charge as far as I've heard. They may even put a monitor in place to check for issues.

 

When you call call the 24 hour emergency service not customer service.

 

What Ray said! Did you call yet? Has the power company fixed your problem yet?

 

Called the power company around 4pm. They said someone should come by before 6pm. Getting ready for bed now at 11:45pm and no one has knocked on my door and the lights are still flickering. I must have misunderstood and they really meant tomorrow by 6pm?

- Peter

 

Very odd...issues like that they normally respond to very quickly.

 

Call them again. It doesn't matter what time it is.

 

The POCO could have had a major outage somewhere else, who knows? They usually have trouble trucks on the street 24/7 just for outages and problems like you have. If they haven't been there yet, call them again.

 

They came out at 11am the next day (of course no one was home since we had no expectation of when they would show - or if!!). Left a hang tag on the door saying they checked the pole, mast and meter and all appeared fine. Did not indicate that any measurements were taken so it sounds like a visual inspection. Of course, the lights did not flicker last night so maybe they jiggled something and it will be good for a while or dumb luck. Only time will tell on this one.

- Peter

 

The next place to check would be inside your service panel, but since you only see the problem at night, it still could be a power company problem. If no problem is found in your service panel and the lights continue to flicker at night, call the POCO back the next time you see them starting to flicker.

 

Flickering lights could also be a sign of water possibly getting into your service panel. We didn't notice flickering lights with our water problem but, our electrician who came here for another job and noticed water in our panel box said we could have had flickering lights. I think it might be wise to call an electrician too to be on the safe side and at least eliminate that possibility.

 

I have never seen lights flicker because of a fluctuation of the voltage, but a slight dimming is quite normal as heavy load appliances, such as air conditioning, start up. A quick fluctuaion that may cause the flickering would probably be a connection problem on the utility side.