Flickering interior lights

[SummitPond]

Presently in a campground with no internet, so I bit the bullet & installed Tapatalk. Still figuring it out; haven't found how to do a global search yet.

My question is about the 12 lighting in the trailer. Recently they flicker, not always and not for long when they do.

I have installed a Progressive Industries EMS-HW30C and when the flickering occurs the shore voltage is not drastically "off" nor fluctuating.

Any thoughts on a cause?

Thank you.


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[BuxCamper]

Check that the fuses are seated and the open circuit LEDs in the converter don't light at the same time.

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[sourdough]

What kind of lighting do you have? What is the condition of your batteries?

[SummitPond]

My lights are predominantly LED. I have incandescent bulbs under the range hood & outside under the step & above the door. I will check water level in the battery. It is a single 12V unit, about 2.5 years old (original). I'll also check the inverter fuses for seating & see if they are illuminated. Thank you both for the suggestions. I'll report back later.


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[jsmith948]

My lights are predominantly LED. I have incandescent bulbs under the range hood & outside under the step & above the door. I will check water level in the battery. It is a single 12V unit, about 2.5 years old (original). I'll also check the inverter fuses for seating & see if they are illuminated. Thank you both for the suggestions. I'll report back later.


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Some LED lights are not designed to operate above 12V (such as landscaping lights). When you are operating off shore power, I believe your converter will keep your DC voltage above 12 volts. This might be the cause of the flickering.

[SummitPond]

Status update:

I confirmed all 12V fuses were snug. I haven't been able to view the water level in the battery as yet.

I have noticed the flickering isn't a dimming but a brightening. Shore voltage doesn't seem to be a factor, but current draw does. With NOTHING turned on but lights (and I know there's about a 2A baseload draw) the readout panel shows anywhere from 30A to 60A! I hear a hum from the inverter, but its fan does not turn on.

Another odd thing or two: the CO detector will flash red (alarm state) and then cycle to green, and the stereo unit speakers 'crackle' even though it is not turned on. Cycling power to that unit quiets it down.

Any ideas? Thanks.


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[chuckster57]

Inverter? Or converter?

Converter is the one that charges the battery and supplies 12V to the trailer when plugged into shore power. If nothing is turned on and your pulling 30-60 amps, something is wrong.

[SummitPond]

Inverter? Or converter?



Mea culpa! Nomenclature. I guess it's a converter. Unfortunately we are not near an RV dealer presently. But at least last night was our last night on the road for a while.

We have a GS extended warranty; I'll look into what they'll do.

Thanks.




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[sourdough]

You might check the LEDs. Some are 12V only and they will flicker if there is ANY fluctuation in voltage in the RV. Mine almost drove me crazy and I found 2 things; first, I had one bad battery causing a parasitic draw making them flicker, and 2) when that was fixed I still had an issue - all the LEDs I had installed were 12V only - and they mean it. I changed them all out to 12-28v and I have had zero issues since.

[JRTJH]

Your converter has a "three stage charging circuit" which senses the battery voltage and provides for charging at three different voltage levels. You can read about the charger at the WFCO website: http://wfcoelectronics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/8900-Operators-Manual.pdf

Your converter is probably a 8955 (55 amps of DC capacity) so it's unlikely that you're reading an actual output of 30 - 60 Amps, especially if the cooling fan is not operating. I'd suspect you're actually reading 3.0 - 6.0 Amps. Usually the cooling fan starts operating at about 6-10 amps of DC output.

As for the LED's. A couple of people have commented about the 12 volt LED fixtures. A "quality" LED will operate on 12-24 VDC, some LED's are limited to 12 Volts DC/AC operation (landscape lighting) and when that type is installed in an RV, once the converter charging circuit goes into Bulk mode ( 14.4 VDC) or Absorption mode (13.6 VDC) the 12 volt variety of LED is "overdriven" and will either start to flicker (only a couple of the LEDs in the array) or will brighten momentarily which will appear as a flickering light in the fixture. Wear sunglasses, take the lens off the light fixture and you can better visualize what's actually happening.

One question: You say that you installed a EMS in the system. Are you certain that the EMS is operating correctly? If it's limiting voltage, it may affect the converter input power (which affects the output also) and with a "undercharged/faulty" battery, it may look like the LED's are flickering when actually the battery is not capable of providing sufficient power and the EMS is limiting converter output..... It sounds more complicated than it really is, just read it a couple of times and hopefully it'll "jell" for you...

[SummitPond]

John

You're right - I had to read it more than a few times!

I assumed everything voltage-wise was OK as the 120V appliances (toaster oven, drill, TV) worked OK.

I did check it with a digital VOM and it's in agreement with the readout panel (the readout tends to round up after 0.5).

I've been having issues with the battery since then (see http://www.keystoneforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=244528#post244528) so maybe if the WFCO unit is faulty this would be a possible cause.

If my understanding of electricity is correct, ignoring efficiency issues, the product of current and voltage (power) should balance out, so if I draw the full 55 amps at 12 volts from the WFCO the 120 V draw should be 5.5 amps. I was seeing those spikes on the Progressive Industries readout but could not correlate it to the light flickering (flickering over too fast) yet the high indicated current draw did not manifest itself in flickering lights. I figured if it was real the breaker on the post would (should) trip. Progressive Industries was not overly helpful in suggesting a solution, other than the inductive coil that senses current draw may be on backwards (it was not).

My battery and shore power are presently disconnected; I figure something is wrong somewhere as even without the battery and on shore power lights do not work. Something is fishy in Denmark.

[bobbecky]

You need to check every 12 volt and 120 volt connection plus all the grounds and neutrals in the panel in addition to every connection at the batteries and anything else you can reach, and make sure the battery ground connection is to bare metal and tight. Strange things happen when you have a loose connection.

[tcob68]

Mine started doing exactly what your describing about a year ago. I replaced the converter and my lights haven't flickered since.

[CrazyCain]

I had 2 lights ( LED ) that started to flicker this past weekend. In the bathroom and on in the kitchen area. The fan was running on the exhaust fan in the bathroom and seemed to be vibrating. I turn it off and the lights stopped flickering. Hum, turned them on and flicker flicker. Checked the connections on the fan, wiggled them a bit, made sur ethey were tight and that seemed to stop the fickering. We will see if that did the trick next wknd..

:popcorn:

[Canonman]

We fought with flickering lights for most of last season. Finally replaced the light fixtures one and then two at a time until we found the (two) that were causing the rest to flicker. Both were in the main L/R slide out. Only happened when on shore power. Caused by the variable voltage used by the converter to charge the batteries. Some lights were OK some are affected. Keystone was good about authorizing a couple of lights to start with. They admitted to this being a known problem with LED certain light fixtures

[sourdough]

You need to replace your lights with LEDs. When you do you need to make sure they are 12-28v LEDs. If you have used 12v only LEDs they will flicker. I replaced mine twice because I didn't know it...they have worked fine since.