Why do my lights blink on and off in bad weather?

Why do the lights blink during bad weather? You may be asking these questions of your electric cooperative, so we want to try and answer them.

Posted by Stacie Nielsen on December 6, 2017

Why do the lights blink during bad weather? You may be asking these questions of your electric cooperative, so we want to try and answer them.

The most common causes of blinking lights are trees and branches. During a storm or bad weather, there may be high winds, lightning, rain, ice, etcetera, which can affect the trees and branches near power lines. Sometimes the branches just touch the lines in high winds. Other times, a branch can fall on the line. When either of these happens, it causes a “fault” or “short circuit” on the line.

In other words, like a circuit breaker in your home, a blink in power will occur when the system automatically shuts the power down to isolate the problem, which prevents serious damage from occurring. Serious damage could result in a longer outage and affect more members. This process happens automatically using equipment called a recloser.

For example, when a tree is on a line, the recloser will open momentarily with the surge then close again to try to restore the power. It may open and close several times over a few seconds before it senses that the problem is no longer there. Thus, the blinking lights in your home.

If the recloser goes through its full operational sequence and the fault is not cleared, it locks open and that is when a lineman must find the problem and manually fix it.

In the winter, we can experience freezing rain and ice combined with wind. These elements can weigh tree branches down, making them more likely to hit power lines.

When rain and ice collect on power lines, they may “gallop” and cause blinking lights. Galloping is when the wind causes the lines to swing and slap together, resulting in a momentary outage or blink. Unfortunately, nature causes galloping and there is not much WH can do to prevent it.

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We hope this helps with any questions you may have, and we appreciate your continued patience as we fix any outages that may occur as quickly as we are able.

If you notice that the trees near you are starting to infringe on power lines, please contact us so we can try to take care of it before serious problems occur.

Stacie Nielsen

Stacie Nielsen

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