String Lights Issue

[archie4650]

I am having trouble with exterior wall outlets and am in need of help. There are outlets on the front of our house that we plug string Christmas lights into (LED). The outlets are controlled by switches inside the house (Caseta Original Smart Switch, no dimmer). The lights are on a schedule so that they automatically turn on/off during the day. The switches are turning on/off appropriately, but the lights are not coming on. In order to get the lights on I have to unplug them from the outlet and plug them back in, and then they come on. I do not have to do anything with the switch. The unplugging and plugging back in has to be done every time the light switch is turned on in order to get the lights to turn on. This problem has been present for multiple years with different brands of string lights. Any ideas on why this is happening and how to fix it?

[Joy L.]

Hello archie4650, welcome to the Forums. We are sorry to hear about the issue you have encountered. To confirm, is this occurring with multiple Caseta Smart Switches, all connected to different string lights? Is there any other timer/motion sensor/daylight sensor associated with these outlets or string lights, or just the schedule(s) in the Lutron App? And when the switch turns on but the light doesn't, you mean the switch's green indicator light illuminates as if the light is On, but the light is not On, correct?

Thanks for your cooperation!

[archie4650]

Hi Joy, thanks for your response. The problem is only ocurring with one smart switch. The string lights affected are plugged into 2 separate exterior outlets that are both controlled by one Caseta Smart Switch. There are not any other timers or sensors associated with this switch. Yes, the light switch's green indicator light is on, but the exterior string lights do not come on unless I unplug them and plug them back in.

[Joy L.]

We may have a few suggestions:

-Reversing the wires connected to the black and red wire leads coming off of the device
-Installing an LUT-MLC shunt capacitor along with the device; this can help to provide more resistance if the switch is having difficulty turning these loads on

https://assets.lutron.com/a/documents/041294.pdf

We hope this helps!