this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2024
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Power coming into the house is AC which means 50-60 times a second the power goes from +110/240V to -110/240v.
LED lights run off DC power, so to change the power type a capacitor is somewhere that holds enough charge to keep the item working until the AC power is back to a usable positive value.
Dimmers limit the power going to the light, so the capacitor doesn't charge enough to keep the light and circuitry on for the full negative swing of AC power.
This is ungodly rudimentary, and corrections are welcome. There is also many nuances I am missing.
Thanks, some of this makes sense. But why is it then not constantly flickering? They usually flicker for, say, five seconds then they stop flickering for 20 then they flicker again and so on. Or they flicker for like a minute then they're fine for a couple more minutes, then back again flickering. The timings vary a lot from house to house.
Building on their comment, perhaps the capacitor is building up energy and dissipates it every 20 seconds. Like beats in resonance when you hear a pulsing in the volume when a guitar plays a single note or chord.