In article , Jason Arthurs
writes
I've lived in this house for two years now and as soon as summer
arrives so do the periodic electrical dropouts, which is a shame
because the batteries in my UPS have just decided they're knackered.

We have a supply which comes from a large pole mounted (two telegraph
poles in fact) transformer at the end of the road, the transformer
itself appears to be quite ancient and even the 'In event of
emergency' telephone number is only three digits indicating it is
indeed from a bygone era. We are supplied via overhead cables courtesy
of a 'telegraph' pole in the garden.

When the weather gets warmer we experience occasions brownouts, short
power outages (usually in the early hours between 4am - 7am) and
generally very poor reliability. Our domestic voltage varies between
240-250v, but usually hovers around 248v (as the over voltage alarm on
my UPS often complains).

Our local provider is Midlands Electricity Board (npower?), is there
any point in complaining or will they simply tell me that everything
is within tolerance? Didn't EU harmonization mean our voltage was
supposed to be a maximum of 243.8v (i.e. 230v +6%)?

Regards,
Jason.


Sounds to me like that is within tolerance. Just because your
transformer is old and one a pole doesn't mean that its faulty as such.
The interruptions to supply could be caused anywhere on the overhead
network feeding it.

Other than that has it been dropping which is usually more of a problem.
Ours is up at 245 to 8 a lot of the time but the waveforms on it are
sometimes "interesting".

Midlands electricity are the people to complain to in this instance but
I suspect that they will say its fine.

Perhaps some new batts for the UPS.....

--
Tony Sayer