Out here only after some serious complaining. Light bulbs burning out, bursting, and so on. Measured 127V, with a spike up from there at night around 10:00pm. Called utility. "It's all normal" ... "But I measured it with a digital storage oscilloscope and I can send you the plots" ... ... "Ok, we'll be out there latest by 8:00am tomorrow".
Now it's 121.5V.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
I buy 130V-rated bulbs. With all the A/C load surges here in AZ, it's a necessity. ...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
The only thing bipartisan in this country is hypocrisy
Same thing happened to me. But but it was going into the 130s. And down to
100V on the other leg. At the service entrance. So I called them and told them to come out and fix their neutral."Blah, blah. Call your own electrician, blah, blah."
So I told them that I have a plot of the voltage, I used to be a distribution engineer....for their company. And I was familiar with the telephone service rep's standard response sheet. They fixed* it that night.
*With an underground service, they hook up a 'balancing' autotransformer to the meter base until they can get the backhoe out in a day or two.-- Paul Hovnanian paul@hovnanian.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Have gnu, will travel.
I had that TWICE happen at the old house (over a 25 year period).
First event, furnace blower (120V) would come on, lights in the house would _brighten_ :-(
Called APS, got the typical dumb broad response.
Read her the riot act, they came out and attached a temporary neutral (above ground) until they could dig up the old one.
Second event, oldest daughter, house-sitting while we were in Australia, reports she was getting a shock from the shower head :-( I measured 45VAC between shower head and drain... grounded only via earth. When I later rebuilt that shower I put a big strap between shower plumbing and drain fixture. ...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
The only thing bipartisan in this country is hypocrisy
The customer service reps are trained to give the standard "go call an electrician" response. They hear so much bizarre crap from homeowners that its wasting their time to deal with non technical people.
If an electrician (or engineer) identifies themselves as such, that's usually enough to get past them and get the service dept. sent out.
Back in the old days, Ben, one of our service linemen was called out to investigate a customer's flickering lights call at a restaurant. He verified that it wasn't the utilities fault. Since he had a bit of spare time, he offered (completely against company policy) to peek inside the customer's panel. He saw aluminum wiring and advised the customer to call an electrician "immediately". The restaurant owner ignored him and called the office again the next day. Since Ben's notes about it being a customer problem were now attached to the customer file, the operator just repeated his advice to call an electrician. No luck. The guy just called in the next day. And the next. Getting the same answer every day.
A few weeks later, Ben stopped by the office and the clerk told him that the customer must have finally gotten his wiring fixed as he had stopped calling. Nope. Ben told her that he had taken the call from the fire department to disconnect the service when the place burned to the ground.
-- Paul Hovnanian mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with. -- Tennessee Williams
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