Huge wrote:
(Andrew Gabriel) writes:
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.
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%)?

Max voltage is 230+10%=253V.

It might be worth complaining about the brownouts and cuts.

Agreed. We used to get lots of brief cuts, which prompted me into
buying a UPS (reminder: need a bigger one now, the original one will no
longer run all the computers). The all-time record being 5 cuts in one

Don't forget, you need a bigger UPS! Do we really need to know that or
are you just bragging?

day. I called the 'leccy people and actually managed to speak to a real
engineer, who said he would "walk the line" for us. (We're on the end
of *miles* of 11kV, with a transformer up a pole, like the OP). He
never called us back, but the cuts stopped shortly thereafter.

He's probably still there holding the bits of wire together.

MBQ