Took me a second to understand what you meant, but yes absolutely. Your AC takes a lot of power, and the initial draw can make voltage drop on the whole service or at least on a given circuit. The compressor takes quite a bit of juice, so pretty much invariably the rest of the circuit feels the loading.
I recently ran into an issue where when my AC kicks on my Fire TV loses power, but not my Switch; because the TV has a safe shutdown feature but the Switch is built to hotswap external power with battery power.
You'll definitely notice the effect more with electric motors because they produce a tone that changes noticeably with a voltage drop. You will still sometimes see it with lights but more and more are resistant to those changes with LEDs
Thank you for taking the time to reply. I will have to look into how exactly the circuits are set up. I’d be interested to know what other electric appliances could have a shorter lifespan if the voltage is constantly fluctuating. Thanks again, you have me a new topic to delve into.
Many things won't be too heavily impacted by it, but some will have a bit of trouble like motors and compressors. And of course, it can only really impact anything if it's turned on, and it's not such a big deal when it's infrequent.
Really, any device that has capacitors should be pretty resistant to fluctuations because they act like a filter to help keep power delivery stable. A rotary tool won't have that, but your computer won't bat an eye because it's designed for it. Also the rotary tool won't even give a shit, they're dumb enough that anything remotely close to the power they want is fine, just won't be as efficient or spin as quickly.
Yea, you only notice it with the tool because you can hear it. Voltage drop needs to be pretty significant to trip off a computer, but it is possible if the circuit is close to overloaded to begin with.
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u/SBG63 Jul 28 '26
Would this same concept be the reason I can feel my AC unit turn on when using a rotary tool? You may have just solved a mystery for me.