Define what type of flickering #
The first step is define what type of flickering.
- 1. Each day or night at exactly the same time/s
- 2. When you are dimming below a certain level
- 3. All the time and / or randomly pulsing
Reasons for Flickering #
These are simple answers to the 3 questions above.
Same time Every Day / Night #
If you live in NSW or South-east Queensland this is likely to be as a result of the off-peak hot water tones injected into the electricity supply by the providers.
it doesn’t matter if you have an electric hot water heater or not – you still receive these injected tones which are used to signal a relay in your electrical board to switch over to off-peak power to heat hot water
This has been happening for decades you just didn’t notice it before you got LED lights because of the nature of older technology and ‘thermal inertia in the filament’ of traditional tungsten and halogen globes/ bulbs/ down lights.
You can potentially stop it/ or reduce the intensity by having an electrician install the right FILTERS for your area at your electrical board – but these can be expensive to buy and have them installed – with no guarantee given that they will work 100%.
⇒ Download the Stop LED Flickering Guide
The best way to fix this is to use the SFI technology which will 100% fix the flickering LED Downlights associated with this off peak hot water signal
SFI is an acronym for SAL Flicker Immunity
〉 Read about this NEW SFI technology from SAL National and how it solves LED flickering 100%
These are the 2 versions of compatible SAL downlights:
Dimming Below a Certain Level #
If this only occurs when you dim below a certain level it means your dimmer’s minimum load requirement cannot dim further with the lighting you currently have.
You can ask you electrician to install a “load bypass” or CAPACITOR across load and neutral which may improve performance is some circumstances.
Or you can try and install some more lights onto the circuit and with the increased load, allow deeper dimming.
Finally you can set a minimum dim level, if using a PIXIE Dimmers, so you can never dim below the level at which this flickering is occurring
Flickering all the time or randomly #
This could be a variety of things from fault LED or faulty dimmers; incompatibility between the dimmers and the lights; faulty wiring
Get an electrician in to diagnose the issue
They may be able to install a CAPACITOR across the load and neutral to see if that eliminates the issue.
Some Quick Fixes #
These are just some brief fixes of what the issue might be and how you might fix it.
More information #
We have written a comprehensive article explaining this on our BLOG.
〉How to fix your LED Lights Flickering
