David Nebenzahl wrote:
On 3/30/2009 9:02 PM Don Klipstein spake thus:

The overload could be from rich college kids having 42 inch plasma
TVs and refrigerators for beer in most bedrooms and most living rooms
and 300 watt halogen torchiere lamps almost everywhere and computers
running in most bedrooms. I say "have the flashlights handy" when the
weather gets warm enough to need air conditioning during the "school
year" to remove the heat produced by all those beer cooling
refrigerators, 42 inch plasma TVs and 300 watt halogen lamps that my
workplace's neighbors have!

Not a great example: TVs don't use that much juice, nor do computers.
300-watt torchieres could add up to something significant pretty quickly
(my term for those lamps is "firestarters").

I probably use more power than your neighbors, as I have an electric
water heater (small one, 20 gal.) and an electric dryer. (But no air
conditioner, thank you.)



There is something that a lot of folks don't realize as
having detrimental effects on the power grid and the
power distribution of homes and business. This has developed
under our noses and most people never considered it.
Asymmetrical loads from switching power supplies can damage
older power transformers that were not designed to handle
the harmonics produced by modern electronic equipment. It's
hard to explain it to a lot of electricians because many of
them have no electronics background. I found a link to a
site with a lot of good information on the problem.

http://tinyurl.com/cn4gv8

TDD