Quote:
Originally Posted by maxhifi
All the same though I would want to get to the bottom of why my line voltage was so high, a call to the utility is in order, since the approach of using a voltage adjusting transformer is really treating the symptoms rather than the problem. You live in the USA, it's supposed to be the best electrical infrastructure in the world... 137V is absolutely not acceptable, and it is possible that the utility will even appreciate it that someone has made them aware of a problem with their system.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DavGoodlin
Most utility companies have in thier public utility tariff (binding agreement) a requirement to supply no more than 5% deviation from 120 volts.
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9 months out of the year I'm up around 129 volts, just this week the 24 hour average voltage measured at 1 hour intervals by my UPS was <125v due to the whole hot and humid things happening outside. By the first week of August it'll be 119, then start climbing again when things eventually cool off.
Where I'm at the stated SLA is for 120v +10%/-5% and 60.0Hz +/- 0.1%, so anything under 133 is considered "Acceptably high, but within spec." and honestly I don't mind it for anything other than light-bulbs. Thankfully, 130V bulbs are actually a thing and they're not priced differently than normal bulbs, but if I ever decide to abandon incandescent light, I know that CFLs tend to go BANG after a month or so here. I should actually remember to get some LED based bulb-substitutes when I find myself in PP&L territory and see how they do on 130v. (I bet they're fine, maybe a 3% reduction in total lifetime which is probably 10k hours or more to begin with.) PP&L does the energy saving bulb subsidy right at the register at almost all chain retailers in their territory, silly Met-Ed (First Energy) either wants you to buy the ones they'll sell, or send in the receipt and UPCs for credit on a future bill if you buy your own less craptacular units.
I live about 1900 feet from the substation, and it just happens to be what feeds a Bayer process plant, and an asphalt shingle plant, plus about 100 residential customers on that end of the borough. Power doesn't go out often for me, but if the main population's grid goes down, I lose internet if its down for more than about 2 hours or so. Cable HFC feed comes in from about 20 miles east, and either the FTC node or one of the two line hybrids in the RF chain before my tap comes up short on the backup power department. The only downside I can find to being part of the medium industrial grid is the hotter potential.
Something to contribute on this one, for Coshi, with nearly 140 (
) volts:
Are you fed with the normal split-phase service or the silly bi-phase service seen in some older multiple dwelling units? Split phase is 240v center-tapped and ground-bonded neutral service(2 hots and a neutral with 180 degree phase angle on the hots.), bi-phase is still 2 hots and a neutral, but hot-hot gives ~208 instead of ~240 because of the 120 degree phase angle difference.
If you're unlucky enough to have bi-phase service, are all your outlets >130v, or just the one you've measured so far? Twice before I've poked around and found that a place wired with bi-phase somehow got changed at the pole to a high-leg delta type setup through some horrible series of errors, and half the outlets got 0.66*208v instead of 120v, which based on the measurement you provided actually seems to be a plausible case here. (137 is near enough to precisely 2/3 of 208v, remember there's a phase angle difference involved.)
Now I'm interested in seeing if you're the third example of this issue I've been party to.