View Single Post
  #266   Report Post  
Tim Thomson
 
Posts: n/a
Default

John P Bengi wrote:

You must live in a tiny town if they sent out an Engineer for that...LOL

Did he have ditch digging caluses on his hands too?

Nice going. Never give up when you know you are right.

You would never get a rebate here for high voltage. power delivered is power
billed.

"Robert Bonomi" wrote in message
...
In article ,
lionslair at consolidated dot net "lionslair at consolidated dot net"

wrote:
Robert Bonomi wrote:

[[.. munch ..]]

It's a matter of history. The "standard" -- for what was expected at

the
outlet in a residence -- changed over the years as power distribution

got
better.

[[.. munch ..]]

Your Honda is probably at claimed 125V because of *lousy* voltage

regulation.
125V at 'no load', dropping to 120V (or lower) as the load increases.

Our house in the mountains of No. Ca. was a few miles from a swinging
transformer.
Under low load, the transformer was at one voltage, as the current

increased,
the transformer switched in another set of windings up until it hit an

end.
The swinging transformer had massive make-before-break contacts that

always rang
(voltage hits) as it moved. I called the power company when it started

hitting
my lines heavy (I was logging them on my APC's) and they found a burnt

contact.


At one point I lived "across the parking lot" from the local sub-station.
the feed came out of the substation, down *one* pole, with the transformer
and the drop to the 6 apartment building I was living in. the building
was turn-of-the-century construction, with -- I think -- still original
wiring. I could get an *nine* volt drop at the wall, by kicking on one
of my pieces of electronic test gear -- one that drew about 8 amps.

*OUCH*.

Anyway, I'm across the street from a school, 2 blocks from a *big*

hospital,
And had several other sizable 'commercial' users within a few blocks.
A line-voltage monitor showed as high as 133V in early AM, with it slowly

and
somewhat erratically falling to about 127V by somewhere after 9AM on a
week-day.

*THAT* led to a call/complaint to the electric company, Demanding that
they get the voltage down to the 'proper' level. (That degree of excess
voltage _is_ hard on equipment, and other things. Reduces the effective
life of incandescent bulbs by about _half_, in fact.)

For some reason, customer service didn't want to believe me -- I guess
complaints about "too much power" are *really* rare.

They suggested that what I was reporting "couldn't be happening".
That whatever I was using to read the voltage must be 'in error'.

I pointed out that I had _five_ separate pieces of test equipment, by five
different manufacturers, that were all telling the _same_ story, within

about
2V (analog readout uncertainty on some of the meters). That all were
industrial- and/or lab-grade gear. That the precision-reading unit

(readable
to 1/4v or finer) had been used for 'reference checks' at half-a-dozen

other
locations around the city, and registered 118.5 - 121.5 at *every* other
location. (About the only thing I didn't have was a _recording_ meter /

data-
logger.

They _grudgingly_ agreed to send an engineer out to see me. He took
one look at my 'bench', and said "Hell, you've got better equipment there
than _I_ do." Then, looked at my readings and said "that's not right!"
(He didn't even bother to cross-check with his own gear.) Borrowed my

phone,
called in to the office, and ordered an _immediate_ roll of a maintenance
team to the substation, and goes outside to wait for the crew to show up.
Which they did, in less than 15 minutes. Less than half an hour later,
my instrumentation is showing a "respectable" 117V. rising all the way
to 123V when the rest of the neighborhood shut down.

I even got a credit on my bill -- where they went back an re-figured what

the
kilowatt-hours _should_ have been if they had not been delivering 'too

high'
voltage. I'd only lived there a few months, but they back-credited to the
date I moved in. It was about 15% of everything I'd paid.


As a matter of fact would his metor not run less with some things like his
fridge, vacuum, hair dryer, washing machine, dish washer, etc. What makes a
power metor spin? If voltage goes up does the amp draw go down?
I would give my left nut to have a little more voltage. Switch mode power
supplies love a slightly higher voltage and often run cooler when they are run
at max voltage.