5 ms·

> he realized that electromagnetic interference from his neighbors’ appliances was propagating through their shared power lines, reducing the quality of the sou

> he realized that electromagnetic interference from his neighbors’ appliances was propagating through their shared power lines, reducing the quality of the sound he was getting. This actually seems a lot more reasonable to me than the monster cable level of absurdity audiophiles are famous for. When I last visited family my sister's home's electricity exhibited all sorts of overload artifacts. Her lights would dim when the neighbor's AC or refrigerator compressor ran. I convinced her to contact ComEd about it as it suggested there was an overloaded supply shared across their homes making voltages sag under load. They sent someone out to just look around her house and act like they did something, then said nothing's wrong. Of course they're not interested in actually fixing the infrastructure when it involves costly work. She's had an exceptional number of electrical appliances fail over the years she's owned the home as well, which I presume is related. But I figure with this audiophile guy he could just run the system off a UPS using the mains just to top up the batteries.

nimish 8y ago
A filter would be just as good.
adjagu 8y ago
Did they check your sisters electricity meter? We had similar issues here. Random light flickers/dimming, electrical devices shorting out and such. All tests in house returned with nothing wrong yet we were having issues. Electric company sent someone out and they got the same results inside as we did. Not deterred they next checked the line into the residence and it was good too. Eventually they tracked the issue to our electricity meter and replaced it. Haven't had an issue since.
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  They claimed to have checked 'everything', but from what I saw they did nothing. I wouldn't expect her meter to be responsible for dimming lights when the neighbor increases the load though. There didn't seem to be any problems related to loads generated within her home, which I would expect to be a problem when the meter's the culprit. It just seemed to me like they had something inadequate in common between the homes, maybe a deteriorated transformer or bad connection. They don't seem motivated to do anything until the power is completely off, monopolies aren't known to prioritize customer service.
eigenvector 8y ago
Cheap UPS inverters can actually have much higher harmonic distortion than mains power. For laughs, try plugging in a UPS with power quality detection into another UPS as its "mains" source, it will probably detect the other UPS as providing poor quality (i.e. high THD) power. If you don't actually need UPS, it's probably easier to use an AC low-pass filter to remove harmonics than back-to-back DC conversion.
sigstoat 8y ago
> I convinced her to contact ComEd about it... the power companies accurately assume that most people calling them don't know anything about electricity. have a trustworthy electrician inspect the situation, and then they can figure out what the problem is, where the problem is, and convey said problem to the power company if it is actually their fault.
- Dylan16807 8y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by "if". If it goes between houses, the blame is pretty certainly on the power company, isn't it? You could argue that the voltage is still within acceptable bounds, so it's not something that needs to be fixed, but that wouldn't change whose fault it is.

nimish 8y ago

A filter would be just as good.

adjagu 8y ago

Did they check your sisters electricity meter? We had similar issues here. Random light flickers/dimming, electrical devices shorting out and such. All tests in house returned with nothing wrong yet we were having issues. Electric company sent someone out and they got the same results inside as we did. Not deterred they next checked the line into the residence and it was good too. Eventually they tracked the issue to our electricity meter and replaced it. Haven't had an issue since.

newnewpdro 8y ago
They claimed to have checked 'everything', but from what I saw they did nothing. I wouldn't expect her meter to be responsible for dimming lights when the neighbor increases the load though. There didn't seem to be any problems related to loads generated within her home, which I would expect to be a problem when the meter's the culprit. It just seemed to me like they had something inadequate in common between the homes, maybe a deteriorated transformer or bad connection. They don't seem motivated to do anything until the power is completely off, monopolies aren't known to prioritize customer service.

eigenvector 8y ago

Cheap UPS inverters can actually have much higher harmonic distortion than mains power. For laughs, try plugging in a UPS with power quality detection into another UPS as its "mains" source, it will probably detect the other UPS as providing poor quality (i.e. high THD) power. If you don't actually need UPS, it's probably easier to use an AC low-pass filter to remove harmonics than back-to-back DC conversion.

sigstoat 8y ago

> I convinced her to contact ComEd about it... the power companies accurately assume that most people calling them don't know anything about electricity. have a trustworthy electrician inspect the situation, and then they can figure out what the problem is, where the problem is, and convey said problem to the power company if it is actually their fault.

Dylan16807 8y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by "if". If it goes between houses, the blame is pretty certainly on the power company, isn't it? You could argue that the voltage is still within acceptable bounds, so it's not something that needs to be fixed, but that wouldn't change whose fault it is.