Low voltage problem only 96 volts

windeguy

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I am not sure if this should be in the Living or the Legal section:

Where I live there has been the addition of a new housing recently. We have never had 110 Volts of electricity (220Volt service) reliably provided. Before it was on the low 100 volt range and now it is continuosly in the mid 90s of volts.
This causes the use of more power, higher bills etc. This is especially true of inverters beacause they rely on peak power to charge the batteries. When the power is in the mid 90 volt range they lose as much has 40% of their capacity to charge batteries and therefore will take almost twice as long while wasting much more energy to charge them.

I have heard others mention they use a system wide regulator, but this does not address the wasted power, it will only transpose it to the system wide voltage regulator. The solution is to get the power company to provide 110 volts during those few hours that they actually provide power.

We have called several times, visited the office and filed official complaints. What is our recourse?
 

MrMike

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Try buying a dedicated transformer, maybe get some people from the area together to go in on it with you. It will cost alot (don't know how much) but this will sove the problem much more quickly then anything else.
 

georgios

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Oct 2, 2004
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Power conditioner

I am not sure if this should be in the Living or the Legal section:

Where I live there has been the addition of a new housing recently. We have never had 110 Volts of electricity (220Volt service) reliably provided. Before it was on the low 100 volt range and now it is continuosly in the mid 90s of volts.
This causes the use of more power, higher bills etc. This is especially true of inverters beacause they rely on peak power to charge the batteries. When the power is in the mid 90 volt range they lose as much has 40% of their capacity to charge batteries and therefore will take almost twice as long while wasting much more energy to charge them.

I have heard others mention they use a system wide regulator, but this does not address the wasted power, it will only transpose it to the system wide voltage regulator. The solution is to get the power company to provide 110 volts during those few hours that they actually provide power.

We have called several times, visited the office and filed official complaints. What is our recourse?

A power conditioner or automatic voltage regulator (AVR) is another solution. The AVR is either servo motor controlled or solid state. Both models consume a small amount of power to operate. The input range is 87 to 140 VAC. The output is 120 VAC. Units range from 5 KVA to 30 KVA. The smaller ones are suitable to provide power only to the inverter. Units 20 KVA or more will provide stabilized power to all household loads (reccomended). Bear in mind, certain motor based house loads ( pumps, a/c, fans etc ), AKA reactive loads need 120 VAC to start & operate normally. The undervoltage will damage the motor windings, in time.

The AVR is a transformer type device & should not result in extra consumption of power as you mentioned above. It will "feed" the inverter with 120 VAC from the start hence charge the batteries at the normal time not double time.

Georgios.
 

SantiagoDR

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Jan 12, 2006
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Try buying a dedicated transformer, maybe get some people from the area together to go in on it with you. It will cost alot (don't know how much) but this will sove the problem much more quickly then anything else.

That is a very good solution MrMike. When I built my house, I was only getting about 85 volts on one side. (I now have a transformer at my property line).

A friend of mine has a dedicated transformer. His is much smaller than the normal ones you see. His is basically designed for just one or two houses.

By having your own, you can keep others from tapping into it as it is private.
I have no idea on how much the small ones costs. If you have a pole right at your house it would work out great. If farther away, then a private one can be a hassle keeping others off of it.

If possible to put up your own pole, I would suggest putting it just inside your property line. I had to put up two poles in order to get telephone service to my house years ago. My only error was not putting the closest one inside my property line, thus others used it and did not offer as usual to compensate me for my expenses.
 

Rocky

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Before buying anything, the first thing to do is check wire gauge.
If any of the wires are getting hot, they are too small.
Test voltage at both ends, and if it is substantially higher at the beginning, then you need bigger wires.
Next, make sure it's both phases, as someone else suggested.
Voltage can drop to 90 volts on one line from overloading, while the other jumps to 140.
There are many ways to deal with this, but first give us a report on your findings, then we can establish the smartest, most efficient economical solution.
 

windeguy

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Jul 10, 2004
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So Eden Norte is useless in this

Thanks for all the replies, as I suspected it appears Eden Norte will not take any steps to provide the correct voltage despite it being caused primarily by their bad transmission system, so I will have to do something myself.

Right now I have 189 volts at my home's breaker box with one leg being 93 volts and the other 96 volts. While I was watching the voltage across the two legs, which should be 220V, I saw it wandering around betwen 185 and 200 volts in the period of less than one minute. That means I might get up to 98.5 on one leg with 101.5 on the other.

Regarding a regulator or a transformer to get the voltage up to 110V/220 : Such devices always consume some power to do this. Transformers are not perfect at converting input to output power since there is always some loss in the windings due to inductance and inefficiency in any potential other electrical circuits. Probably that loss will be less than I am losing now in the battery charging process..

I have zero chance of getting neighbors in on this together with me. Does anyone have a source for a single house system to provide what I need?
 

MrMike

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A dedicated transformer will be installed before your meter so you will not be charged the difference in power consumption.

I went throught this exact same thing with my internet cafe in Santiago. There was a Pizza place next door with a bakery and the owner insisted on using electric ovens for all his work, said gas ovens dried his bread out too much. Every day he would turn on his ovens at around 4PM and the voltage in my place would drop from 135 to 86, which made all of my UPS's for my computers go into standby mode, basically making them useless.

I went out and got regulators for all my sensetive computer equipment, but even so my air conditioners were damaged and I had to replace the compressors in them several times.

Finally the EDENORTE's transformer on the street gave up and blew, and we were all completely without power for 2 weeks while they took their slowass time replacing it. Instead of putting in a bigger one to avoid the same problem happening again, they put in one identical to the inadequate one that blew up and we were back where we started.

Finally the Pizza guy got himself a dedicated transformer from the power company, I think he even got it on a payment plan because if I recall correctly the thing cost him about 3 thousand dollars but was way higher capacity than any household would need.

This was pretty much the end of my low-voltage problems, since he was the culprit his dedicated transformer took enough load off of my shared one bring the voltage back up into the useable range.
 

Rocky

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Did you check the voltage at the other end yet?
Did you feel wires and connections for heat?
Start there before buying or changing equipment.
 

windeguy

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Had to post again, ran out of time to correct my previous post

Thanks for all the replies, as I suspected it appears Eden Norte will not take any steps to provide the correct voltage despite it being caused primarily by their bad transmission system, so I will have to do something myself.

I measured 189 volts at my home's breaker box with one leg being 93 volts and the other 96 volts. While I was watching the voltage across the two legs, which should be 220V, I saw it wandering around betwen 185 and 200 volts in the period of less than one minute. That means I might get up to 98.5 on one leg with 101.5 on the other.

I just repeated the measurements and got 196 on the street with 97 on one leg and 98 on the other. At the house I got 195 volts across and 97 on one leg and 98 on the other. My conclusion is that I am getting similar votages on each leg, but a continually varying voltage from EdenNorte that is almost always about 25 volts too low across both legs and about 12 volts too low on each leg.

Regarding a regulator or a transformer to get the voltage up to 110V/220 : Such devices always consume some power to do this. Transformers are not perfect at converting input to output power since there is always some loss in the windings due to inductance and inefficiency in any potential other electrical circuits. Probably that loss will be less than I am losing now in the battery charging process..

I have zero chance of getting neighbors in on this together with me. Does anyone have a source for a single house system to provide what I need?
 

Rocky

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Are you located in the Sosua area by any chance?
I have some connections that might get the job done for you, with a reasonable "propina".
If you want it to be private, you can PM me.
 

windeguy

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Jul 10, 2004
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About 1 volt drop from the street to the house

Did you check the voltage at the other end yet?
Did you feel wires and connections for heat?
Start there before buying or changing equipment.


Thanks Rocky, yes I just reposted above. The drop between my service on the street and my breaker box in the house is only about 1 volt. No hot wires. Since Edenort is only giving me power in the 190s across both legs that seems to be the problem of getting voltages in the mid 90 volt range to inverters and the rest of the house. .

Understood Mr Mike that the transformer placed before my meter won't cost me any more for power, just a big upfront investment in the transformer. I was thinking that you meant something that mounts in my house and not "at the street". I will waste my time with Edenorte for a while longer before I go any further into house sized transformers. There is a new house on my street, perhaps I can tap into the new transformer in their front yard ( with permission of course :bandit: )

To add insult to injury, a set of batteries on one of my inverters is failing after just 2 years. I added a second dose of EDTA to them, but I am not hopeful that these Trace batteries will recover.