Cheryl wrote in message ...
Hello. It's possible I can't give enough information here for a
diffinitive answer, but I'm asking anyway. My lights and other
electrical appliances have recently been experiencing surges of
power; lights go brighter, refridgerator goes louder, etc. I'm afraid
this is going to damage something, or cause a fire. I've called the
power company and their annoying automated messages state that
flickering lights (etc) are usually caused by interier wiring, yet
others I've spoken to say that nothing can cause EXTRA power to be
supplied to the affected appliances, diminished yes, extra (surges)
no. It also doesn't effect one or two circuits, either, but pretty
much the whole house. Should I contact an electrician, or have the
power company come out and inspect? They say they'll charge me $80
for the visit if the problem isn't in their wiring, and they might
not be able to resolve it for that price.

How frequent are the surges? 1 per day or much more than that? Do
the surges always come on at the same time, or at "rounded" times such
as 9:00 PM, 10:30 PM, 11:45PM?

I had a friend who back in 1993 was running a small ISP from his
basement. He said that every night at exactly 10:15 PM there was a
power surge or sag or something that would screw up a couple of his
modems, which he then had to reset. They had called the utility
company who explained to them that at this specific time they did
something to the power supply (can't remember what, but something like
reduce the power generation of one of their power plants) for the
night because the overall demand for power would always drop after
10:00 PM. Why was this only affecting him (i.e. why wasn't everybody
with a modem at home getting screwed up?) I'm not sure, but perhaps
because he was using up a lot more power than the average person
(regular appliances + 4 servers, 4 monitors, 60 modems) that his house
was more "sensitive" to fluctuations in power.