Voltage Reduction

[tomturbomatic]

We had one yesterday. For the first time in all of the years I have owned the Friedrich in the kitchen, the compressor went out on overload. The fan stayed on, but the compressor made some strangulated sound and shut off. I let it cool for a while, went outside and threw some tap water on the side of the compressor shell and on the condenser coil. She started back up when I went back inside and turned her on, poor thing. The compressor has been running flat out for weeks. I guess it deserved a rest. I ran the central system for an hour like I did the previous evening to help out then shut it off and went to bed.

CU used to test window ac units for how well they fared during the extreme conditions of high temperatures and reduced voltage. I have never noticed any problems until yesterday.

 

[dj-gabriele]

extreme conditions of high temperatures and reduced voltage

I very well understand high temperatures but why on earth reduced voltage?! Why would I want to do something like that? Especially in a test? To me it would make more sense to run the machines with a dirty condenser or evaporator and see how they cope with bad maintenance.

Lower than ideal voltage makes electric asynchronous motors run hotter by drawing much more current and produce less torque! A sure combination to burn them!

Could it be that the windings in the compressor are loosing insulation? Or you're low on refrigerant?

 

[mattl]

No, he's talking about what is referred to as a brown out. The load on the power grid is so high that the end result is a drop in voltage.

 

[firedome]

low voltage happens all the time in summer...

as mentioned above. In August 2003 the entire power grid went down in 5 or 6 Northeasten states due to extreme load and some mistakes in management and equipment failure. We will never forget that event!

 

[maytagbear]

In some parts of

the United States, the grid is at least 75 years old, if not older. 75 might not be too old for a person, but it's pretty old for a unit of infrastructure. It is amazing to me that there has not yet been a catastrophic long term failure. The blackout of a few summers ago was just a precursor.

Not to get (very) political, but I think investing in infrastructure like the grid, and water mains, and bridges would be a wonderful way to deal with unemployment.

Lawrence/Maytagbear

 

[Ultramatic]

 

<span style="font-size: medium;">Almost every summer during a heat wave, our voltage gets lowered. The Friedrich and the Whirlpool shrug it off. They work flawlessly. But the Kenmore starts cycling on and off. The compressor runs for much shorter cycles resulting in a warmer bedroom. I'm coping for now, with the living room AC on, and the bedroom door open, the bedroom cools down nicely.  When the summer clearance sales start, I'll replace the Kenmore. Pity, if not for the lower voltages, it works just fine. </span>

 

<span style="font-size: medium;">I agree something has to be done with our power infrastructure.  I've been through 3 blackouts here (1965, 1977 and 2003). I vaguely remember the '65 blackout, but the '77 and '03 I'll never forget. I will never understand why we can't have a modern power grid. I'd gladly pay higher rates to help finance it's modernization. </span>

 

[tomturbomatic]

"Not to get (very) political, but I think investing in infrastructure like the grid, and water mains, and bridges would be a wonderful way to deal with unemployment."

Wonderful idea, but it would improve the economic situation of millions and that is not what the Republicans want under a President from the Democratic Party, so to spite him, all must suffer, just to get very political and hot like the Friedrich's compressor. It will take a Republican politician falling through a bridge to bring about infrastructure inprovement.

The elctrical situation is worsened by the splitting up of electrical generation and distribution so no one wants to make investments anymore. One company generates electricity which is fed into distribution lines owned by other companies and sold to consumers by still other companies.

 

[tomturbomatic]

The first NE Blackout

A friend was caught on the Yale & New Haven Railroad (is that the right name?) on the way back to Westport. They spent the night in the chilly dark cars. When the power came back on the train returned to NY and he went back to work. I remember the Life magazine article about the first huge blackout. It mentioned all of the things that were happening just before the lights went out and one of the things mentioned was ovens being switched on to prepare dinner.

 

[circlew]

Voltage reductions would happen frequently at my aunt's, when she lived in Brandon, MS. It would cause the refrigerator, freezer and central air units to have trouble starting.

When she got the Kohler gen-set installed, the automatic transfer switch was set to start the generator whenever the voltage dipped below 85% of the normal voltage for more than a few seconds.

Between the frequent outages and the brownouts, that generator got lots of use.

 

[launderess]

IIRC Friedrich Units When Tested Under "Brownout" Co

By CR were all over the place, some models fared better than others.

Years ago when NYC was suffering through a prolonged heat wave our old Friedrich Wallmaster (built in the 1980's) could not cope with voltage reduction conditions suffered via ConEd. The compressor kept cycling on and off and you could hear it straining. At first we thought something was wrong with the unit, but a telephone call to Friedrich's customer service in Texas told the tale. Their online tech told us he and the rest of that department had been getting tons of calls from NYC area reporting the same problem. Their advice was to shut the units off until power company restored full voltage to avoid unit damage.

 

[tolivac]

Brownouts can even happen in the winter or during the holidays-when everyone has the heat on full blast-holiday lights and cooking.Have seen it at transmitter sites where you have line voltmeters in the transmitters-and transmitter blower motors struggling,too.At the plant I work at now-we have one transmitter that shuts down if the voltage goes too high.So,you have to bring up another transmitter to sub for it.The too low voltage as in brownouts can even be more dangerous as all point out--to motors!

 

[Ultramatic]

interesting evening so far..

 

<span style="font-size: medium;">Consolidated Edison issued a voltage reduction alert along with a warning that if we don't shut down all "unnecessary" appliances we would loose power.  The lights are dimmer, and they keep flashing. At one point they completed went off and flashed on again. This is the worst voltage reduction I've ever seen.</span>

 

[alr2903]

We excel at "Nation Building" that is why all our experts are in other countries.  alr

 

[philr]

A friend of mine recently had a power reduction problem but it wasn't caused by the power company. It was caused by a bad ground. The ground connection at the service drop was bad. There's also a safety ground wire clamped on the cold water pipe but that one wasn't enough (or it's also bad as removing the link from the safety ground to the power company's ground in the circuit breaker panel didn't seem to worsen anything)... When using 110 volts appliances such as window A/C units, the sump pumps in the basement or the fridge (which happened to be all on the same side of the circuit), power would drop to 106 volts on half on the house's circuit while it would rise to 131 volts on the other half, causing most lights to dim but others to go very bright! The fans on the A/C units were also turning very slowly when it suddenly happened while the one in the bathroom would increase it's speed as the remaining power from the lights and other 110V accessories on the "loaded" side of the house would travel through the neutral wire!  We made a temporary fix by twisting a piece of 14 gauge wire (we didn't have anything else!) around the ground wires next to the bad service drop connection and everything went normal after with 118 volts on both sides. That happened the week that construction workers were on strike here and he had to leave for 3 weeks two days later... We did notice a few things that were wrong so I think he'll need to have a few things replaced by an electrician when he gets back home!

 

[d-jones]

The biggest problem with our current electrical grid isn't the fact that it's aging. My father retired from the Department of Water and Power here in Los Angeles after forty years on the job as an electrical mechanic. According to him and a number of his friends that were also electrical mechanics, a great deal of the high voltage switching equipment, relays and breakers found in distribution stations all over Los Angeles, were made in the twenties and thirties. Their designs are extremely robust and they were built to be easily repaired when a problem came up. In fact they've served so well and so reliably over their many years of service that many of the electrical mechanics have developed a great deal of respect and admiration for both the equipment and the men and women that designed and built it all those years ago. In many cases the new equipment that replaces them is of dramatically inferior quality. The biggest problem with the grid is the lack of new power generation as the population(and therefore demand) has grown. That's the primary issue that needs to be addressed. There's nothing wrong with the old equipment. It just needs routine maintenance as any new replacement equipment would.

 

[neptunebob]

d-jones I was wondering how the electricity situation around LA is with San Onofre being decommissioned. Are then any brownouts or blackouts because the SONGS is no longer operating in this hot weather?

 

[Ultramatic]

 

<span style="font-size: large;">Well the Friedrich has bought the farm. Thanks to Consolidated Edison's voltage reduction shenanigans last night, I walked into a stifling living room this morning. I turned it off to let it cool down. Then started it up hours later, the compressor engages for about 5 seconds, starts to cool, then cycles off, and stays off. I'm pulling it out of the wall tomorrow so my dad can check and hopefully repair it.</span>

 

[tomturbomatic]

Not building power plants--funny thing. You don't notice oil companies preaching conservation. They are anxious to sell all they can come up with. Power companies don't want to invest the money to build and don't want to deal with the environmental regulations. Maybe it will be easier with the new gas-fired plants, but hydro damages the river systems and coal kills and produces ash which makes problems. So power companies are preaching conservation which is wise in certain aspects of increasing efficiency and insulating houses better, but when they are telling people to wash in cold water and almost no water, that is where their not wanting to increase generating capacity gets stupid.

 

[yogitunes]

Voltage reductions are when the demand is so high, rather than face a blackout, it's reduced, the least would be a brownout.....or a small amount of down time, rather than long hours of no power.....we don't like it, but sacrifices have to be made...

but this plays havock on machines, motors and electronics....