I've experienced lots of power related issues in the last 12 days. several outages.

One whole string or XMAS lights fried (I've never seen every light in a string burned black before).

Lightbulbs fried at 5 times the normal rate.

Cox Comm cable box fried. Never seen a cable box fail before. Multiple cable system outages.

Garage door opener fried. Never seen a garage door opener fail before.

Anybody else seeing electrical device accelerated failures?

-- ng (cantprovideemail@none.com), January 13, 2000

Answers

I am also in Fairfax County and can confirm this.... we've had several small outages -- enough to have to reset clocks several times a week. It's getting really annoying!!

-- Meg Moss (meg@y2k.am), January 13, 2000.

Springfield here,

NO problems!!

-- d....... (dciinc@aol.com), January 13, 2000.

strange. i have seen lots of flickering but no surges in burke. where are you anyway NG?

-- tt (cuddluppy@aol.com), January 13, 2000.

I live also live in Springfield, VA. Haven't noticed anything unusual in terms of power. No need to reset clocks, no burned out lightbulbs. My nine-year old complained that his red pokemon gameboy cartridge stopped working after our wet dog sat on it. But I don't think I can blame that one on Vepco.

-- Jay Golter (JGolter@aol.com), January 13, 2000.

Hi Cuddluppy.

Love your handle (and posts the last year).

I live in Oakton. 30 year old area. Some overhead wires (not my street). If I understand the way VA Power prioritizes fixing things, it is by housing density and we are about the last on the list. Took 4 days in last year's ice storm to get around to us.

ng

-- ng (cantprovideemail@none.com), January 13, 2000.

Go to Radio Shack and get one of those plug-in AC line voltage meters. If it goes above 125 volts, unplug stuff.

I am on Duke Power here in NC and they are often sending us 130 volts with frequent fluctuations. I have yet to put the wave on my oscilloscope but I bet the phase is off. There can be many causes for this, such as high use upline.

The power company will not replace any fried equipment short of an act of Congress. You will have to monitor for yourself and take steps to protect sensitive equipment such as computers.

-- Forrest Covington (theforrest@mindspring.com), January 13, 2000.

thanks ng. what a nice thing to say.

i will take your advice, Forrest, just to see if we are having fluctuations. the one strange thing i did notice last night is that my house alarm reset itself. we had it set before we went to bed and when i woke up, it was not set which leads me to believe the power went off or something strange?

hey, forrest, you seem pretty knowledgeable, can the power fluctuate enough not to cause my clocks to go off and reset themselves, yet be enough of a loss to cause my alarm system (which might be more sensitive) to reset itself?

i never did say it, forrest, but i loved that movie you linked to of the Squirrel King. i knew he had to be pretty amazing and he truly lived up to my expectations. :-)

-- tt (cuddluppy@aol.com), January 13, 2000.

I've got one of those Radio Shack plug in units. I live in S.E. Pa. and the voltage has been going from 121-133vac since 1-3-2000. I also monitor on a PC Digital voltmeter. 117-130 over same period?

-- gomer (gnomer@dot.com), January 13, 2000.

ng:

we live in Fairfax County too. We haven't had any problems at all. We had a whole house surge protector installed last year by VA Power. Maybe it's been helping.

-- Sally Strackbein (sally@y2kkitchen.com), January 13, 2000.

Nothing yet in Fairfax, VA. Our development gets hit frequently with brief, and a few not-to-brief outages each year, but nothing has happened since 1-1-00 with our power, thankfully.

-- Elaine Seavey (Gods1sheep@aol.com), January 13, 2000.

Looks like some denial going on in Fairfax. I don't know why people just won't admit that they're having problems.

-- (joel@hunters.net), January 13, 2000.

Am I supposed to admit to having problems I don't have?

Fairfax County is now under a wind warning. As I look out my window, the trees are really blowing. The wind may gust up to 50 mph and blow tree limbs on power lines (according to the weather channel). We had a similar wind warning a couple of days ago. No problems then.

Cable is flickering a bit. Power is fine.

ng lives about 10-15 miles from me. It is very possible that he is having problems while I am not.

-- Sally Strackbein (sally@y2kkitchen.com), January 13, 2000.

Am I supposed to admit to having problems I don't have?

No, of course you're not having problems. Nobody is having problems. Y2K has been fixed, right??

-- (joel@hunters.net), January 13, 2000.

Sally, we don't have time for your Polly-turncoat statements here.

This thing is snowballing now. Get out of the way or get run over.

-- Thinking Out Loud (just@wonderin.here), January 13, 2000.

Can anyone with true technical knowledge explain to the group what the utility "acceptable" AC voltage limits are for the U.S.? Somewhere (I can't recall, might have been here on TB2000)I thought someone mentioned 120 volts plus or minus 7 percent. True or no? What about how much variation over time? Some sense of "normal" would be helpful here.

At my residence in southcentral PA, I am finding occasional AC voltage swings from 121 to 125 over a 2 minute period using a handheld digital multimeter plugged into a wall outlet. This is not constant; sometimes settles down to lesser variation (for example, 120.2 to 120.6 range for ten minutes, then wilder swings again). This has been happening with no dramatic wind or other weather in the area; on the other hand in my rural location we are quite used to brownouts and blackouts (hours to days) from trees on the lines. Problem with these observations is I have no pre-Rollover baseline to compare to.

Thanks, --Andre in southcentral Pennsylvania

-- Andre Weltman (aweltman@health.state.pa.us), January 13, 2000.

I live in Burke and only had a few seconds of power loss this afternoon during the windstorm. tt - drop me an email as we are "neighbors". Be well all.

-- Gail (fialkow@erols.com), January 13, 2000.

Sheesh - when did I become a polly?

-- Sally Strackbein (sally@y2kkitchen.com), January 13, 2000.

Northh of Atlanta, Georgia we have had lights that go dim and yellow many times since the first. It is so noticeable that my 13 year old mentioned it the other day while getting ready for school.

What could be the problem at the power company that causes the lights to grow dim to yellow? What are they doing or not doing?

obo

-- Obo (susanwater@excite.com), January 13, 2000.

Hello Novay2k folks! I work near the Tysons Corner area (123 north of mall). After the wind storm began, around 1:15pm there was a power outage for 1 1/2 hours (it extended along 123 towards McLean according to coworkers who had gone out to lunch, but the Tysons area itself was ok). When power was restored it yoyoed up and down: power ok for 5 mins, out for 3 minutes, ok for 10 minutes, out for 3 minutes. After 30 minutes of this I gave up doing useful work on the computer and went home. I live 10 minutes from there in Vienna, and have had no power outages here.

-- S Attas (slzattas@erols.com), January 13, 2000.

-- ng,

Same down here in Hampton Roads VA. Outage tonight was 2 hours, and cox had to reset, modem was ng for about 3 hours following power resumption. @nd time I've lost my cox modem service due to VA's dirty power. I'm on my second modem BTW.

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), January 13, 2000.

Gail: Do you like to mudwrestle?

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.cum), January 14, 2000.