Arfa Daily wrote in message
...

"Eeyore" wrote in message
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semidemiurge wrote:

I am visiting my retired parents in Mexico and have been taked to try
and figure out why their and their friends appliances keep failing
after very limited use. They have experienced numerous failures of
kitchen appliances, with microwaves and refrigerators having the most
problems. These are new relatively good quality brands that seem to
fail in 6 to 12 months. I don't have my multimeter with me but I have
been told that someone else has measured voltages from the wall outlets
as high as 129v. So I don't know if Mexico has a voltage regulation
problem with their grid? The house wiring I have observed is pretty
bad, espite being a new construction with 3 prong outlets. So I can't
confirm if the grounding has been adequately done or if there are
ground loops, et. al.
Does anyone have ideas as where to proceed? Voltage
stabilizers/regulators maybe? thanks, rick

Mexico's 'official' voltage is 127V.

So yes it causes trouble. A bucking transformer or two might help you.

Graham


A friend of mine worked for the local water authority many years ago, and
he
had a similar problem at a remote pumping station, where light bulbs and
pump motors would fail in short order. Turned out that there was an
intermittent neutral connection at the pole transformer half a field away,
which was allowing the line voltage to come up to the three phase level
intermittently - over here that's up to 415v from 240v. I've probably
explained that wrong, I'm not an electricity distribution expert, but the
gist of it in terms of levels and the cause is right, so I'm sure someone
who is au fait with the subject can pick it up and know what I'm trying to
say.

Arfa



But with that fault, for the UK does not that just mean the same usable
supply stays at 240V but instead of neutral being a nominal near ground it
goes up 150 V or whatever, which should not blow equipment.
Isn't it more a problem of very low loading or heavy inductive loading /
unbalanced loading that shifts the supply up in voltage range to dreate
surge/oversupply to equipment problems.