I've been told that the electric service to the home varies more than normal, that it isn't clean in its fluctuations high and low.

I've found reference to devices that will "clean" up the smoothness of the power delivery.

I'm wondering if they are worthwhile, if they are more worthwhile when one has a natural gas home backup generator that can kick in, or other factors and advice that you might have. Here are a couple links.

I'd like to protect home electronics, LED lights etc to greater extent than just surge protectors.


Isolation line conditioners
Power conditioners

There are surge protectors, and then there are surge protectors, they look alike and work quite differently. I use devices that have automatic voltage regulation(AVR), or whatever a particular manufacturer happens to call it.

Have you measured the voltage coming into your home? Does it fluctuate? By how much?

Have you contacted your provider to let them know your service is degraded? Have they come out and looked at your servicing transformer? Do they agree that is out of spec?

Before you go out and buy a bunch of needless stuff, first ensure you have a problem.

Great advice, will call them!

Yes, I've been told by IT contractors that there is a lot of variance.

I do have some surge protectors that regulate for their devices and know I've seen 117-122, but that's just me watching and I don't know how telling they are.

Hmmm, an IT contractor told you that you have degraded electrical service? Call me skeptical.

Are they certified electricians? I doubt they're measuring the power at the panel and I would think that it would be something that would need to be measured over time. An instantaneous measurement is not going to prove much.

Do you experience breaker pops, brown outs, recurring disruption of service?

For point of use, they will work. For your electrical service prayer may be a better option unless you have a lot of money to throw at it.

I'd talk with utility provider. There should not be large fluctuations on day to day basis.

We have 1 breaker, probably one GFCI on it, that trips repeatedly. I"m going to change that one out and see what happens.

We've lost some LED bulbs that shouldn't have gone so very fast.

I am going to call the utility.

quote:

Originally posted by ChuckFinley:
I've been told that the electric service to the home varies more than normal, that it isn't clean in its fluctuations high and low.

Just out of curiousity: Who told you that? And I wonder exactly what they meant by it.

ETA: Disregard. Saw it after I posted. (I started my reply a while ago. Got interrupted.)

quote:

Originally posted by ChuckFinley:
I've found reference to devices that will "clean" up the smoothness of the power delivery.

A whole-house power conditioner I would imagine would be an expensive proposition. Individual branch or outlet/device conditioners?

quote:

Originally posted by ChuckFinley:
I'm wondering if they are worthwhile, ...

It's been my personal experience that anything that didn't deal well with the normal variances in commercial power delivery were best served by a capable UPS.

Place where I work used to (?) put them on some products that went on the plant floor, where pretty serious power fluctuations are common--especially in body shops. (Resistance welding gear, depending upon its firing sequence, can actually cause 480 service busses to physically flex.)

quote:

Originally posted by ChuckFinley:
I ... know I've seen 117-122, but that's just me watching and I don't know how telling they are.

To know what's really happening you have to drop a chart recorder on the mains. You might just have some lousy branch circuits.

quote:

Originally posted by ChuckFinley:
We have 1 breaker, probably one GFCI on it, that trips repeatedly. I"m going to change that one out and see what happens.

The breaker trips repeatedly, or the GFCI? Or is it a GFCI breaker?

quote:

Originally posted by ChuckFinley:
We've lost some LED bulbs that shouldn't have gone so very fast.

*Hmph* LED replacement bulbs are still in their infancy. TBH: I would not go replacing a bunch of incandescent bulbs with LED, again, like we already did. 1. The energy savings is not really all that great, IMO and 2. They don't appear to live nearly as long as claimed.

We stocked-up on a bunch of incandescent bulbs when the threat of them going away was presented. Then we replaced most incandescent bulbs with LED bulbs and wondered "Now what're we going to do with all these incandescent bulbs we bought?" I'll tell you what we're going to do with them: Use them to replace the verkakte LED bulbs that don't last worth a tinker's damn.

And, btw, I know how my power behaves, because I've got a smart UPS on it that watches it. It's actually pretty decent.

And we have a whole-house surge suppressor on the main coming into the distribution panel.

Current varies in all systems. To make the electric current more stable, with less variation, Uninterrupted Power Supplies have been available. Basically, they have current coming into the unit, then directed into storage units (batteries). The current then goes through filters and other regulating components and comes out in a very consistent regulated form. They are used for this purpose in labs, hospitals, and to make sure current is available to electronic hardware in case of interruption by weather or other reasons. I don't know what is on the market these days, but it's worth a look.

The question is: what are you trying to protect? And does the cost/benefit equation justify it?

I bought a line conditioner for my "expensive" tv. It became obsolete and crapped out long before the line conditioner did. When I bought it and told a co-worker who was into tv's and audios, he said it wasn't worth it as modern tv's have circuits that control that

Not an "IT guy" per se, but I can tell you if I was going to diagnose an incoming power problem I would probably be connecting a data logger to the incoming power and leaving it there for at least a couple days, probably a week if it's really intermittent.

quote:

Originally posted by greco:
Current varies in all systems. To make the electric current more stable, with less variation, Uninterrupted Power Supplies have been available. Basically, they have current coming into the unit, then directed into storage units (batteries). The current then goes through filters and other regulating components and comes out in a very consistent regulated form. They are used for this purpose in labs, hospitals, and to make sure current is available to electronic hardware in case of interruption by weather or other reasons. I don't know what is on the market these days, but it's worth a look.

Just to be clear he is talking about double conversion units. A standard $100 UPS does NOT do this.

Before you invest in power conditioning equipment solely on someone else's assessment, why not rent a power quality monitor and leave that attached for a week or so? I know I'm dating myself but the gold standard in such equipment used to be a company named Dranetz. I'm not sure if they're even still in business but I'd bet if not there's similar equipment available out there somewhere. Research test equipment rental for possible sources. That would also give you a solid printed record with which to do battle with the power company if needed.

Good luck.

edit: Looks like I was typing while others above were offering essentially the same advice. Sorry about that. I really do read all posts before responding.