Flickering Lights When Dimmed

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1

This is more of a generic electrical question that I’m hoping to get some tips on troubleshooting. We just had all our smart dimmers and light fixtures installed and one of our chandeliers is flickering when dimmed.

These are regular E12, 6W, dimmable LED bulbs. https://a.co/d/2SjGu5b. These same bulbs are used in 2 other fixtures, which work fine when dimmed. The main differences are:

  1. Flickering fixture has an Enbrighten Zigbee Dimmer with Enbrighten Add-On Switch because I wanted to be able to dim at both locations of the 3-way. The others use Zooz Z-wave Dimmer and not on a 3-way.
  2. Flickering fixture has a whopping 18 bulbs in it. The others have 4 to 8.

How would you troubleshoot?

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I found with aeotec nano dimmer the rated bulb wattage had to be greater than 10w (I used 12 w led) otherwise I would get flickering. I assume your other dimmer may be running more than one bulb to make up the watts

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Do the other fixtures with the same bulbs also use the same dimmer switch?

I’m wondering if this dimmer uses a triac for dimming instead of a FET. A triac typically can cause more flickering.

What level does the flickering start?

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It does not. The flickering fixture is an Enbrighten Zigbee Dimmer. The others that are not flickering are using the Zooz Zen72. I’m not quite sure if Enbrighten uses Triac or FET. As long as it’s not at a 100%, it will flicker every now and then. Worse the lower the % is.

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So, do you suggest a higher wattage led lightbulb for this chandelier? It could be worth a shot. This flickering chandelier actually has 18 bulbs in it compared to the 4-8 on the one where it works.

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Well that partially blows my theory out of the water. The zen72 is triac based. The zen77 with the FET is my favourite dimmer.

As @ThunderboltsRock suggests, higher wattage led bulbs should have increased capacitance and may fix your issue.

I assume you don’t want to swap your switch at this point.

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If I have to swap the switch, I will, but changing the lightbulbs would be more ideal. From reading through this other thread, it may be the bulbs… maybe the Enbrighten dimmer is just not compatible with these LED bulbs or they may need a higher load. I’ll try to change them to incandescent or higher rated LED.

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Dimmer-LED_Bulb compatibility problem is not very uncommon and manifests itself as a bulb flickering at low diming %. This device (or similar) specifically designed to solve such a problem:
https://www.amazon.com/Lutron-LUT-MLC/dp/B01E9F084E/ref=sr_1_15_sspa?crid=3IFG3N6E3C69M&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.BbTk2arVBTBDrESZMpViAMcNE6FQpLrz4BcYFS2yMBG8jNjY9WLJm8tzIYCzmJA-l_hayKcehJ6M4tPC-wGywZ-gS9l7ZukJfvqF5lQBsMYg1Mrf2PEzZ4m1YAfTTBqahlHoc7nJT6a_ekb3M-I1ndKsSw08VbTgKY0Op-8w86_g5ztJ1ZHP5o0czaTYokODgC2iOhaP1gn3ict35t_pGgTBK45MzGtWm16ZZfjkHuGRB91OlZYdRlmzJ0OWAe4p3EES2dD7DU-OhkRZnkBJN7fNZy1IXzYa_BH8EKA685E.FKjyOTXocl0CXOvDJ1f-X4FOQj-Cu9bKEU__syIzusk&dib_tag=se&keywords=Lutron+LUT-MLC&qid=1716056708&s=hi&sprefix=lutron+lut-mlc%2Ctools%2C97&sr=1-15-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9tdGY&psc=1

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10

I’m going to test by changing a few of the lightbulbs to incandescent. If that works, then I know it’s the lack of load resistance and a product like this would definitely work! This is cheaper than the Aeontec one I found: Amazon.com

But damn, these are the most expensive resistors I’ve ever bought :joy:

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