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Our country's electrical grid is notoriously unreliable and we've been having daily power outages.

Lately, all the apartments in my building (and our neighbors) have been having issues with the electricity, where ceiling lamps (and other devices/appliances) are all momentarily dimming (I'm not sure if that's the right word). It's not flickering since the light doesn't goes off; it just loses "strength" for about a second or so and then goes back to its "regular" intensity.

The microwave is also momentarily losing power while heating something: the light dims a bit for a second or so.

I'm no electrician, but I'm sure this hurts our appliances. What can I purchase to regulate these electric fluctuations?

FYI: the power company help service is practically non-existent.

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  • First phone/contact your power company(right now) to check your wires. If that checks out, you will need an electrician to check the wires inside the house. It sounds like a broken/loose main power wire and power company will check/fix for free. If inside wires, an electrician will cost, but will be much cheaper than the house burning down.
    – crip659
    Commented Jun 8 at 19:56
  • Let me edit the question. You’re assuming that it’s me and not the electric grid.
    – rbhat
    Commented Jun 9 at 0:19
  • Yeah, I'd call the power company, especially if all the fluctuations are happening to stuff on the same leg of your service...
    – ThreePhaseEel
    Commented Jun 9 at 3:12
  • 2
    The power grid helpdesk is non-existent, so I don't expect help from them.
    – rbhat
    Commented Jun 9 at 18:01
  • 3
    Also, this issue affects my whole building, my neighbors and their neighbors. it's not an isolated issue that just affects me.
    – rbhat
    Commented Jun 9 at 18:01

2 Answers 2

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Small, individual device Uninterruptible Power Supplies for sensitive equipment like computers, TV, and other important/expensive home electronics.

Large, heavy duty systems with batteries and electronics to condition the power to protect the whole house. You'd need a very large bank of batteries to support running the fridge, microwave and other major electric appliances. If the brownouts are short lived, you'll make it. If they last for minutes or hours, you might have to decide which appliances will be backed up and which won't. The fridge should be on the "backed up" list. ;)

In general your major appliances probably aren't going to be heavily impacted by brown outs, but it can be very annoying. Many newer appliances are computer controlled, though, and the brown outs can be bad for the computer parts. Unfortunately, when those parts go, the whole things shuts down.

Incandescent bulbs will be just fine. LEDs may be OK, maybe not.

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If nothing else works, power conditioners exist. That wouldn't address your lights, but it would keep appliances plugged into it happier. Some types of UPS also have this buffering behavior.

Some types of LED bulbs may be less sensitive to brownout than incandescents are.

But the place to start for a real fix is your landlord, and the landlord's place to start if they're too cheap to call an electrician immediately is the power company.

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