My outlets are all showing roughly 132V on my tester (my UPC that my PC is plugged into shows ~134.
Is this normal or do I have an overvoltage condition? Should I notify the power company?
I first became aware of this since my neighbor’s lights kept burning out quickly. She had an electrician test her service & it was showing the same. I’ve never had trouble with lights or anything, but when I tested my lines, the voltage seemed high.
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Replies
If it's a reliable reading it's too high...
He better turn down the fratostat on the compound error inducer in the anti corruption service feed from the computer's terminal self destucter then HUH?
That's what I did.
I think the Q33 Space Modulator is AFU...
Update:
I put in a call to the utility company & w/i 30 minutes a guy was at my service panel checking it out.
An our after that, two trucks showed up and our power went out so I looked out the window & they were swapping out the transformer.
I'm getting readings of 123-124V on each leg.
Re: "I put in a call to the utility company & w/i 30 minutes a guy was at my service panel checking it out."Glad to hear it worked out for you.In my experience a lot of power companies, at least the better ones, jump on such service calls pretty quick. Might take a troubleshooter five minutes to check the drop and meter. A check which can save a lot of trouble if the drop or transformer is the problem. Hats off to the the guys climbing the poles and keeping us both electrified and safe. They have a hard job done in some of the worse conditions and seldom get any credit. After, not uncommonly during, the storm they are out there getting the people power as fast as they can. Funny thing is, considering their tough job, I can't remember meeting any linemen who wasn't a really nice guys willing to do anything within their power to help people out.
"within their power"...
very, VERY bad pun!!!!!!!!! ROFLOL!!
Pretty good response time on the utility's part, glad they got things fixed. Like 4Lorn said, the linemen are usually pretty good guys, although the people back in the office are kind of crabby sometimes....
If you call your local electric utility, they may or may not say it's too high...132 volts is 10% higher than a nominal 120, and that may be (just) within their accepted tolerances. Do you know if it's consistently that high, all day? Try checking it at different hours, say in the morning, the middle of the day, at during dinner time and before you go to bed. The voltage can vary up and down a fair amount depending on the demand at any given time; for instance if there's a local business or industry that uses a lot of power during the day and then shuts down at night. The utility should be able to put a voltage recorder on the line for a few days to see what's going on. If it is consistently high they should be able to adjust the output of the transformer.
Yes, it's too high. The standard, at least here, is that you should read the nominal voltage plus or minus 5% at the service entrance. That means 114 to 126 volts is the acceptable range.
The first question to resolve is whether it's really that high, or whether it's just the accuracy of your meter. Given that your neighbor has the short bulb life issue, it seems likely to be real. But you might try that voltmeter somewhere that's served from a different transformer. Just follow the wires from your house up to the transformer, and find someone else in the neighborhood whose house is fed from a different transformer.
The other thing you should do is measure the voltage on both legs of your service. If you have 135 on one side and something like 105 on the other, with 240 between the hots, then the problem is resistance in the neutral. If it's 135 on both sides, with 270 between the hots, then your utility company needs to shift the taps on the transformer.
So, do those voltage checks in your main box, right after the meter. If it's OK there, then you have a neutral problem in your house wiring. If it's NG there, call the POCO. It's their problem, and they should be all over it due to the danger and potential liability.
If it's in your house wiring, my advice is don't try to find the problem. Instead, start early on a Saturday morning, turn off the mains, open every box in the house, clean and check everything. Make sure all the screws are tight, the splices are solid, replace switches, receptacles, and anything else that seems to be marginal. Somewhere in that whole-house tune-up you'll fix the problem. It doesn't matter where. You'll also head off other problems that haven't shown up yet.
-- J.S.
Edited 12/12/2005 2:02 pm ET by JohnSprung
That's too high. Check a fairly large number (10-15) of different outlets in different parts of the house, and record all the voltages. You shouldn't see more than a volt or two difference. In particular, if you see some that are LOW and others that are HIGH then you have a very dangerous condition -- an open neutral connection. If they're all high then the problem is that the electric co needs to adjust the tap on the transformer feeding your house.
In either case a call to the electric co is due. Standards vary slightly, but 125V is normally about the highest you should see, and you should never see over 130V.
Of course, make sure your meter is accurate. Some electronic meters in particular read peak voltage rather than RMS and will always read high.
happy?
what are the causes/conditions of an open neutal?
A bad connection.
If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people
happy?
I submitted a bid about a year ago to fix up a house that had an electrical problem. I may have postd about it earlier.
Small town, about 5,000 people, city owned electric company. This house was the last one on the block, at the end of the run from the nearest transformer, and it had low voltage problems. So the city agrees to install a transformer on a pole across the street. problem was, the city worker didn't know what he waas doing and wired the transformer backwards, which sent a very high voltage into the house. Fried most of the appliances, and smoked several outlets before the breakers tripped. We were going to completely re-wire the place, but the city insurance company was trying to only replace the bad outlets. Didn't get the job, and I never heard what happened.
"When asked if you can do something, tell'em "Why certainly I can", then get busy and find a way to do it." T. Roosevelt
simple enough. thanks for the reply.
Causes: loose screw, corrosion, broken wire, etc.
Condition: the 240 volts gets divided up unevenly, one side sees less than 120, the other side more. But they add up to 240. Often internal fuses will blow and bulbs burn out on the high voltage side, reducing the load on it and sending the voltage even higher until everything on the high leg is destroyed in an accelerating surge of destruction. At that point, when the last bulb burn out, you have an open circuit and everything goes dead. I had a loss of neutral once on a low budget movie location. It goes quicker than you can remember and figure out what to do.
-- J.S.
Thanks for your reply. I have a fan on a job that when it is plugged in to a certain recepticle it will not turn, everything else goes dead and the motor starts to overheat. As soon as its unplugged all the lights and recepticles come back on. The fan works fine on all other plugs. Any ideas?
2-prong or 3-prong plug?Any chance the recepticle is on a dimmer, or is otherwise "odd"?
If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people
happy?
" everything else goes dead "What is EVERYTHING ELSE?I have not notice the lights in Vegas going dark.
Turn off the breaker for that receptacle, open up the box, check all the wiring in it, fix any problems you find, and put in a new receptacle. If that doesn't fix things, post the new symptoms here.
-- J.S.
I just got in. The plug for the fan is a three prong. There is no dimmer for this plug. Thanks for the advise, I will check out the internal wiring asap. Las Vegas is still bright I hope?
My best guess is that the circuit is daisy-chained through the problem recepticle, and there's a bad contact there. The contact is OK until the fan plug displaces the internal springs in the recepticle.Odds are pretty good that the recepticle is back-stabbed.Question: Based on your original post it's not clear whether this is normal wiring or a temporary construction hookup, maybe even off a genset. More details there, please?
If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people
happy?
Normally loads are run in parallel. Each load sharing both hot and neutral. But the hot does not run through one load to get to a second.Sounds to me like someone wired it so that the hot to the lights is run in series through the motor. This would cause the lights and motor to divide the voltage. The lights, if incandescent, dim quite a bit. Which in daylight conditions could be mistaken for going out completely. If they are fluorescent units they likely would go out completely as they drop below the restrike voltage.The lower voltage would effect the motor by keeping the start coil, if it has a start coil, powered for far longer than it is designed for. The heating could also cause an internal short by damaging the insulation on the windings.On a shaded pole unit, or other without a start winding, the low voltage would generally cause the motor to overheat as motors tend to be constant power devices where if the voltage is low the amperage will climb to make up the difference. Result is a greatly increases amperage draw through the windings, heating and, again possible damage to the windings.
Thanks for all the information. I really have not had time to completely investigate all the advice I have received but will soon. This came about when I plugged in a squirl cage fan with an old motor(probably a 1/2 hp) only to later find that the motor smelled hot and was not running and and other circuts in the house were completly out.(the few that were on) When I unplugged the fan the lights and radio came back on.(other branch circuts) No breakers had to be reset. I plugged the fan into another outlet and the fan came on and worked fine (and the motor cooled down) I plugged other item into the outlet in question and they all worked fine. I have noticed that sometimes the lights will go dim and flicker without anything loading the circuts.
OK, I suspect that you have a bad connection in your main panel or somewhere out to the power pole. The plugging in of the fan was coincidental. This may be the "open neutral" situation discussed earlier in this thread.
If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people
happy?
I go back to your early suggestion.There is a "bad connection". Either at the receptacle where is plugged in the blower or up stream.Since he never gave any details of "everything stopped working" it is hard to tell.But he only talked about light dimming and not getting brighter.I think that the blower overheated and stopped working since the voltage was too low due to the high resistance connection.But that could be either intermidant in that receptacle or the lights and radio that he tried drew such little current that the drop was not that much.
I was basing it on his statement that lights would sometimes dim/flicker on their own. Doesn't necessarily prove it's a problem beyond the one circuit, but strongly suggests it.Probably the first order of business should be to determine how widespread the problem is -- whether all the trouble is isolated to one circuit or there's trouble on several circuits.
If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people
happy?
Thanks to all for the help. You are a wealth of information on this forum. I now need to go thru all the suggestions and do some diagnostic work. This is a mobile home and the connection to the main power panel is thru a 1960's stab type fused disconnect at the street. So there a few possible thing to look at in addition to the ones you all mentioned.
You may also have aluminum wiring -- bad in any case and doubly hazardous in a "modular structure".Make sure your smoke detectors have good batteries!
If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people
happy?