I have noticed a problem with my TV and computer which I think is related to the power suppy in my house.
Every now and then the (brand new) TV will flicker and the speakers on my computer will make a sort of crackly-pop sound. It never resets the PC but I have just lost a hard drive and it was only 7 months old.
A friend lent me a power-supply-checker thingy which you plug into the wall socket and it checks the voltage. It registered almost 260V instead of the normal 240V (Australia).
I have surge protectors on everything valuable (even the couch ).
Now the questions.
Does having a slightly higher voltage mean anything in terms of long term damage to equipment?
Is is most likely a spike in the power causing the weird TV-PC problems?
Does a surge protector protect against these spikes?
If not what else can I use to protect my hardware?
Is this most likely a suburb wide problem or dodgy wiring in my (cheap rented) house.
Unclean power, or power that isn’t to spec can certainly damage your hardware. Surge Protectors will only protect you against large spikes, not normal variation in power to your stuff. I wouldn’t worry about the TV too much, but the computer should probably be hooked up to a UPS with Automatic Voltage Regulation. It’ll take in your ‘unclean’ power and produce a perfect output for you…plus it protects against surges (like lightning) and will keep your PC up if the power fails (and shut it down if it’s out for a while.)
One of the ‘real’ ones? The older ones or cheap multimeters get confused by the line voltage not having a perfect sine shape. When did you measure? Your voltage varies over the day. IANAE (I am not an electrician), but 8% seems high but still within normal range. It affects the lifespan of lightbulbs, other appliances should do fine with a higher but stable voltage. Start worrying at permanently having 264V (10%). Then you should call your power company, I think that’s the point where they start worrying, too.
Most PC speaker power supplies are very sensitive to line noise (read: crappy). Do the speakers pop when you turn on the TV or other appliances? If so, and if nothing else acts weird, I suspect your TV supply to hiccup and pulling the speakers down along with it when it draws more current while re-starting. The speaker popping looks more like a secondary effect. You still don’t know if the TV is source or victim of the unstable power, though.
I had problems with hot voltage in a small town I lived in. I was cooking about 135-140v out of an outlet that should’ve been doing 120.
I did two things:
called the power company - they’ve got pole-mounted voltage regulators and they can be adjusted. That dropped it about 5v. They really weren’t interested in getting it much better than that.
I got a “line conditioner” from Tripplite. Basically it’s a multi-tap transformer with an automatic switch in it. It’ll take anything in from about +/- 20% rated voltage and get you a lot closer to desired voltage. It’ll autoswitch in case of slow surges or brownouts. It has a secondary function as a surge surpressor.
Normal surge surpressors are only good to remove spikes (high frequencies) from line voltage and do not regulate average voltage. Tripplite’s web site shows they make a “complete line of 230v line conditioners” too.
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