Flickering LED lights

Benny74 · Dec 12, 2023

Hello all- I hope this is the right place to ask this question. A few weeks ago the LED lights in the kitchen started flickering intermittently, mostly when first turned on in the morning. I changed the light switches in case of dimmer compatibility problem but flickering continued and also happened in other lights on the circuit. This circuit comes from the subpanel. We had the power company check their side and they said there was no problem. We checked the power into the subpanel and it was good. The flickering got worse and spread to other circuits on the subpanel. There was some arcing at the circuit breaker for the subpanel in the main panel (an older Siemen's panel). I changed the subpanel breaker as well as the whole busbar.
This seemed to fix it. The other day there was a buzzing from an outlet in the kitchen for a brief time, and later the power blinked on that circuit. The LED lights (different circuit from the outlets, but all from subpanel) that originally flickered then went down and up in intensity the following morning. Not as bad as the original flickering, but it was there.
My question is, could there be something causing it that eventually led to the arcing in the main panel at the subpanel breaker? The breakers in the subpanel all look fine. I'm not sure what else to check, and I don't want to end up back where I started. Any ideas what could be happening?
Thank you.

Megawatt · Dec 12, 2023

Benny74 said:
Hello all- I hope this is the right place to ask this question. A few weeks ago the LED lights in the kitchen started flickering intermittently, mostly when first turned on in the morning. I changed the light switches in case of dimmer compatibility problem but flickering continued and also happened in other lights on the circuit. This circuit comes from the subpanel. We had the power company check their side and they said there was no problem. We checked the power into the subpanel and it was good. The flickering got worse and spread to other circuits on the subpanel. There was some arcing at the circuit breaker for the subpanel in the main panel (an older Siemen's panel). I changed the subpanel breaker as well as the whole busbar.
This seemed to fix it. The other day there was a buzzing from an outlet in the kitchen for a brief time, and later the power blinked on that circuit. The LED lights (different circuit from the outlets, but all from subpanel) that originally flickered then went down and up in intensity the following morning. Not as bad as the original flickering, but it was there.
My question is, could there be something causing it that eventually led to the arcing in the main panel at the subpanel breaker? The breakers in the subpanel all look fine. I'm not sure what else to check, and I don't want to end up back where I started. Any ideas what could be happening?
Thank you.

Reading what you stated is you heard a bussing sound coming from a receptacle which makes me think that you have a bad connection possibly or something else in that particular receptacle. Your lights and some receptacles are more than likely on the same circuit.

Benny74 · Dec 15, 2023

Megawatt said:
Reading what you stated is you heard a bussing sound coming from a receptacle which makes me think that you have a bad connection possibly or something else in that particular receptacle. Your lights and some receptacles are more than likely on the same circuit.

The lights are on a circuit with other lights, which is a different circuit from this receptacle. Both of these circuits and others are on the subpanel.