Question about refrigerative A/C causing lights to dim momentarily

Yes.

Your neighbour is on their own circuit or possibly even a different phase. Normally shouldn't cause problems with their supply.

Nothing much to worry about, but call the sparkie who installed it if you have issues with this affecting other appliances in your own home.

Cheers, Alan

Yep.

Resistance of power cables. If all cables were chunky thick, then you wouldn't notice minor drops like that. But here in real life, we use only "enough" copper to do the job. Little drops like that are not deemed consequential enough to change anything.

You don't notice your neighbour, because his fridge is not sucking enough to make a difference at the street level, where the cabling is much thicker to cater for a naturally higher load. And even if your neighbour is sucking enough power from the grid in short bursts for you to notice, it would depend if you're on the same phase they're on, if not it would be much harder to notice, because the heavy load would have to go back to the local transformer and induce enough of a difference to be indicated onto the other phases.

But basically, that's not going to happen.

--
Linux Registered User # 302622

**Dump it and buy an inverter type. Problem solved.

Trevor Wilson

No, hang onto it unless there's a dinky-di problem. It may be less likely to blow up if you get large power transients.

No worries, I'll just throw away several hundreds of dollars worth of equipment so my lights don't flicker slightly every few minutes when it's a warm day. :)

It's also worth noting that on days when the aircon is running flat-out, it's actually more efficient than the same size inverter would be.

**Not quite. You'll be throwing away an old, inefficient air con and replacing it with a far more efficient one (expect around 50% better efficiency). In the long run, the inverter model will pay for itself in saved electricity charges. The benefits don't stop there. Inverter models are far more compatible with motor/gen or Solar/battery arrays, due to their soft starting systems.

Trevor Wilson

That's quite a claim. Any stats to back that up?

**Yup. Check out the specs on quality inverter models, using the latest gas, with non-inverter. I selected two, similar models from the same manufacturer. They use the same gas (R-410A) and are both spilt system models.

The Panasonic CS-E9GKR (Inverter) has a COP of 4.33 The Panasonic CS-WDKR (Non-inverter) has a COP of 3.19

Obviously not a 50% difference, but a measurable one. That does not tell the whole story, however. Cheap, window (Chinese manufactured) air cons, often don't use R-410A and often over-state their real efficiency. As a person who has owned a number of air conditioners, I will never go back to a non-inverter type. A quality inverter model is quieter, more efficient, has soft starting and is generally much nicer to live with.

Trevor Wilson