Top Post Alert - too long sentences

Trouble-shooting - of a fresh occuring problem - is best.
by a professional with proper instruments

vs : trouble-shooting an old intermittent occasional problem -
after the homeowner and all his expert friends & neighbours
have fiddled around with things ..

Can you shut off the geo-heat-pump and see if that is the problem ?
Any new neighbours on your supply feeder ? Solar / wind / industry ?

... far too many variables for this guessing game ..

Good Luck. John T.




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Thanks for the input. After speaking with a more knowledgeable tech
at the company, I found that there was nothing wrong with those
voltages that I measured. However, that doesn't help me resolve my
problem with the car charger.

According to the knowledgeable tech, the clicking is almost certainly
caused by voltage fluctuations, but not the noticeable kind that make
your lights dim noticeably (more on that later). Instead, he
suggested that there is noise on the line that is causing voltage
spikes - very brief voltage fluctuations that might only last
milliseconds at a time, and therefore not be measurable on my crude
multimeter, but would cause the safety circuitry in the charging
station to briefly suspend the flow of electricity to the car - that's
what all the clicking is. He suggested that this could be caused by
loose ground connection at the panel, or that there could be something
on another circuit introducing noise. I thought that it was odd that
turning lights on would mitigate the problem, but he said it might be
that the extra loads could actually help to dampen the noise (or
something like that) so that the voltage fluctuation at the charging
station would not be enough to cause the problem.

So, further diagnosis required.

Now, when he brought up these brief voltage fluctuations, I said oh,
like how when the compressor for our geothermal heat exchange system
kicks in the lights dim for a fraction of a second? No - apparently
that's a different but possibly related problem. I can't decide from
searching the internet, whether that is normal or a real problem -
depends who's talking. Our house, built in '77 has a 200 amp service
(I think). but we live in a rural area, and are literally the last
house on the power line, so distance from the transformer could be a
problem.

So, there could be multiple issues.

I've had a number of CFL and LED bulbs fail prematurely (IMO), but I
always chalked this up to new technology not being particularly
robust. Now I wonder if these failures are really due to a problem
with our electric service or wiring.

Wondering if the next step is to have an electrician come have a look
or to ask the power company to test things on their end first -
apparently they can hook up some kind of data logger.

-J
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