On 4/11/2012 12:39 PM, gregz wrote:
Art wrote:

A lot depends on you. I am a retired engineer. Actually, engineers
never retire, we only bug our spouses with engineering-type stuff all
over the house. I've had my Kill-A-Watt for about 5 years now and
probably use it once a month, on average for generally testing, etc. I
also had a voltage problem where the power company was jacking up the
voltage, apparently to relieve low voltage problems in other parts of our
local grid. I was up to 126 volts and sometimes higher. It did cause
problems with at lease one piece of electronic equipment in my house.
When I called them and gave them the results, they initially brushed me
off. But when I got to talk to an engineer, he was interested. They
called me back about 1/2 hour later and said the problem was theirs and
it would be fixed immediately. I actually watched the voltage go down about an hour later.

How would they do that ???


A common method is utilities have voltage regulators. They may be in
substations, but there are also pole mounted ones. One type is a
multi-step buck-boost transformer. The regulator raises and lowers the
voltage from another transformer. For a +/- 10% range and a 75kVA
circuit the regulator transformer would have a 7.5kVA rating.

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