Re: Strange: X-10 outlets & LED Holiday Lights

[Brian W. Antoine <briana@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 25 Nov 2006 17:11:39 +0000 (UTC), Eric <ericw2000@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>I have two Leviton 6227W outlets outside my house which have been used for
>years to operate our holiday lights. Yesterday I put up new lights, those
>LED holiday lights instead of our usual C7 lights. Everything works fine so
>far.
>
>When I came home, the outlets have switched off from the timer, and the LED
>lights continue to glow faintly, maybe 10% of their full brightness. When I
>unplug the lights, they go out completely. When I plug them back in the
>relay trips and the come on full, as they're supposed to.
>
>Is still low voltage present to operate the relay, or did I wire these
>incorrectly?

  You're running into the local control "feature".  Even appliance modules
and outlets leave a small current running through the load so they can
detect the on/off/on switch sequence and power up the load on local demand.
That leakage is enough to turn on the LED's at a low level.

  At least with some new versions of appliance/lamp modules, I've seen a
programming feature where you can disable that local control feature, and
hopefully that actually kills the leakage current instead of just telling
the module to not pay attention to it.  I don't think I've seen that kind
of programming feature in an outlet though.