I had noticed, after taking a long shower last night before heading for work, my power to my condo unit was flickering on one side. I have a hot water tank, an older Fridge, and a 15,300 BTU 120 volt air conditioner all on the same side of my unit, thinking they may be sharing the same line in to my circuit breaker.
In any event, there was some major flickering, it lasted about 5 minutes, where the A/C was not turning on, but trying to turn on, my whole side of my unit, where the A/C is on, that side, my Fridge was turning off and on, I mean clicking very loud, my electric stove was beeping off and on (that was on off), my lights were dimming, and then shutting off and back on, it was if the one side of the house was possessed. I unplugged my A/C because I couldn't power it down normally, and flipped all the circuits off and back on, and in about 10 minutes, the power seemed to be okay. This happened ONLY on one side of the condo, the other side had a steady stream of electric, the lights were all okay.
Do you think I had too much on one side of my unit pulling too heavy a load, or do you think the power company pulled back a bit from a larger load in my neighborhood, or is this something I should be totally concerned about?
Best Answer
Late in the afternoon on a hot day is when the power company has the highest load. Later in the evening the load tapers off.
So, either your air conditioner is malfunctioning and drawing way too much current, or the power company was experiencing a brown out, or a little of both.
If you plug the A/C back in and it works fine then maybe it was the power company.
If you continue to have problems I would suspect the A/C is going bad. The only way to tell is to take ammeter readings on the unit while it is running to see if it is exceeding its rating.
There are other possibilities but if you don't experience any problems without the A/C running I wouldn't pursue them.
Good luck!