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I live in a new apartment (about two years old), and have lived there for about two months without any electrical issues. I have an older 40 inch 1080p LCD tv (about 7-8 years old) in our bedroom (the bedroom is on the same electrical circuit as our bathroom). The other day, I went to turn on the tv and the picture was out. I just assumed the bulb or something finally went, but I know this can be caused by other issues.

In going to troubleshoot, I unplugged the tv and plugged it back in (it's plugged in directly into an outlet, along with an Amazon Firestick), as soon as I did this, the rest of the power on the same circuit went out (lights wouldn't turn on in bedroom/bathroom, no other outlet was supplying power, and the outlet in question also stopped providing power as well.) What's weird is that this didn't trip the breaker.

The apartment maintenance came and said it's because the tv was pulling too much power, so simply unplugging it brought power back to the the circuit. I tried the tv on other outlets and it didn't cause this issue (the tv bulb is still seemingly dead, but power on the tv works), and other electronics on the same outlet didn't cause this issue either. I also had like maybe one other small device on the same circuit at the time so I can't imagine it would be overloaded. I have little to no electrical knowledge (clearly), but I didn't think a device could somehow cut power to the rest of the circuit without tripping a breaker, especially an LCD tv, malfunctioning or not.

I'm beginning to wonder now too if the tv issue was a result of something electrical (a chicken or the egg scenario I suppose). there were no power surges or anything else unusual occurring ahead of time. I guess I'm just trying to feel out if this sounds like a normal occurrence, because I'd hate to buy a new tv and have it turn out that the electrical circuit is the cause of the original tv going out, and have the same thing happen again.

Thanks in advance for an electrical knowledge or insight.

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    The maintenance yahoo is wrong. A device can't "pull too much power" in the sense that it hogs it from the other devices. If the breaker isn't tripped, the other devices will function, assuming that there isn't a faulty connection on the circuit. This is what I suspect (along with a bad TV backlight). Hard to say, though.
    – isherwood
    Commented Dec 8, 2020 at 17:08
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    If the rest of the devices went off it must have tripped something. Either an MCB, the main breaker or a GFCI. As @isherwood says - maintenance guy knows not what he is talking about.
    – SiHa
    Commented Dec 8, 2020 at 17:13
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    Look at the outlets that lost power to see if any have a "test or reset" button. Maybe the maintenance guy reset it and didn't mention it to you.
    – JACK
    Commented Dec 8, 2020 at 17:57
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    Have you tried plugging a lamp into that outlet? It sounds to me like a loose connection to the outlet which is also breaking the connection to the rest of the circuit.
    – DoxyLover
    Commented Dec 8, 2020 at 19:39
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    I would try a heavy load like a hair dryer on high. Yes there are devices that can monitor power and shut the line down if excessive current draw is detected. I have seen these on equipment but not in residential units. If power is included they could be controlling it but I would go with a bad connection and a hair dryer plus your other devices should load the circuit enough to create the failure if it is loose (and it will get worse as each time there is usually some arcing)
    – Ed Beal
    Commented Dec 8, 2020 at 20:33

2 Answers 2

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+1 on GFCI , being an older tv , looks like you have an increase in leakage current on that tv.Could be caused by alot of things going faulty.

What you can do: Basically go the circuit panel turn it off (to see which devices are connected)and start unplugging all devices on that circuit and see if it still trips with ONLY the TV connected to verify its the TV.This is because the typical leakage current tolerance is ~20-30mA from A->N on gfci(depends on manufacturer and rating) for ALL devices on that circuit.Each device has a certain leakage current ,could be powerboards(surge protection type) , failing x/y caps ,etc..

But yeah going by gut feeling looks like someones going TV shopping for Christmas :)

Edit: Third paragraph of the OP indicates he's essentially done the trouble shooting you're recommending and that didn't help him out at all.

True ,need sleep :P , therein lies the answer,there is no way to fix leakage current unless you can internally repair the circuit board , so solution is to either get new tv or disassemble tv and find faulty module and replace accordingly.

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  • Third paragraph of the OP indicates he's essentially done the trouble shooting you're recommending and that didn't help him out at all.
    – FreeMan
    Commented Dec 9, 2020 at 13:09
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Thanks for the help and comments everyone! So they came back and discovered surprise surprise, it was a loose wire in that specific outlet. So it wasn’t specific to the tv. Still trying to figure out if that actually caused the tv to go bad though. Will be kind of annoyed, but not much I can do about it 🤷🏻‍♂️ They fixed the outlet and the problem seems to have resolved now.

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