6 ms·

From my experience appliances tolerate a wide range of voltages. The outlets in my house routinely deviate from the standard 230V, with the lowest I have seen a

From my experience appliances tolerate a wide range of voltages. The outlets in my house routinely deviate from the standard 230V, with the lowest I have seen at 170V and highest at about 260V. I have not had any appliance malfunction. Edit: I am not advising anyone to deliberately do stupid things, simply mentioning that from my experience the builtin margin is fairly large.

justsomehnguy 3y ago
Anything with an AC/DC transformation would be fine, anything with an AC motor would be not. Partially, not the every compressor in a refrigerator would tolerate that. But 170V... yikes!
bayindirh 3y ago
Most of them are either 110-240V appliances, or lose performance when it goes around 170, and you may not notice. 260V is in +/- 10% threshold and is possibly falls within "engineered in tolerance" range, but will probably shorten the life of many appliances if supplied constantly.
etimberg 3y ago
Are you measuring RMS voltage or just the instantaneous voltage? An RMS voltage of 230V corresponds with a peak voltage of ~325V so reading of 260V could theoretically happen.
- nicolaslem 3y ago
  That's the reading from my UPS, I believe it's RMS since it reads 234 V currently.
- mike50 3y ago
  That's not how it works. For a sine wave the integral converts to Vpeak/Sqrt(2)
lxgr 3y ago
You (or your landlord) should probably hire an electrician to get that checked out – especially the higher voltage might be indicative of some scarier failure modes. A voltage drop of 25% could also mean you have semi-broken wiring somewhere, which can cause fires or shock hazards on faulty appliances.
- nicolaslem 3y ago
  I did but unfortunately it quickly turned into all parties involved blaming each other (it's your utility, it's your installation...) and it got nowhere. For the past year it's been much more stable than before so I don't worry too much about it.
  - smallpipe 3y ago
    Make sure you have good insurance and multiple loud smoke detectors...
    - ajb 3y ago
      Insurance won't cover if you knew there was a fault and didn't fix it!
      - repiret 3y ago
        Do you have a citation for that?
        ajb 3y ago
        Sure. This is the relevant clause in my current home insurance policy: "You must take steps to maintain the Home in a good state of repair and take all reasonable precautions to avoid loss, damage or injury and to safeguard all property insured from loss or damage." These things are pretty standard - I would be very surprised if there isn't a similar clause in all of them. Which implies that, if you fail to do so, they don't have to pay up. The wording in your policy may be different. What are "reasonable steps" will depend on legal precedent. It may, for example, take into account that you're not an expert, and will probably include some reasonable time to get stuff fixed. But certainly it provides them the opportunity to deny a claim. Obligatory disclaimer: I am not a lawyer or insurance expert, get your own advice if you need it.
zebracanevra 3y ago
Thats quite a spread. Is it up to spec where you are?. In Australia we have 230V nominal, but the allowed range is from 216 (-6%) to 254 (+10%).
ajb 3y ago
Lots of devices have switched mode power supplies that will still output the same voltage. Last time I had a brownout the only thing that stopped working was the washing machine, and I thought that was broken. Paradoxically, it may be the lower voltages that are more dangerous, because it will result in a higher current draw from all the devices. Mains voltage has a nontrivial allowed range (in fact in Europe they increased it slightly so that devices would work across countries with slightly different original standards) but this is well out of spec.

justsomehnguy 3y ago

Anything with an AC/DC transformation would be fine, anything with an AC motor would be not. Partially, not the every compressor in a refrigerator would tolerate that. But 170V... yikes!

bayindirh 3y ago

Most of them are either 110-240V appliances, or lose performance when it goes around 170, and you may not notice. 260V is in +/- 10% threshold and is possibly falls within "engineered in tolerance" range, but will probably shorten the life of many appliances if supplied constantly.

etimberg 3y ago

Are you measuring RMS voltage or just the instantaneous voltage? An RMS voltage of 230V corresponds with a peak voltage of ~325V so reading of 260V could theoretically happen.

nicolaslem 3y ago
That's the reading from my UPS, I believe it's RMS since it reads 234 V currently.
mike50 3y ago
That's not how it works. For a sine wave the integral converts to Vpeak/Sqrt(2)

lxgr 3y ago

You (or your landlord) should probably hire an electrician to get that checked out – especially the higher voltage might be indicative of some scarier failure modes. A voltage drop of 25% could also mean you have semi-broken wiring somewhere, which can cause fires or shock hazards on faulty appliances.

nicolaslem 3y ago
I did but unfortunately it quickly turned into all parties involved blaming each other (it's your utility, it's your installation...) and it got nowhere. For the past year it's been much more stable than before so I don't worry too much about it.
- smallpipe 3y ago
  Make sure you have good insurance and multiple loud smoke detectors...
  - ajb 3y ago
    Insurance won't cover if you knew there was a fault and didn't fix it!
    - repiret 3y ago
      Do you have a citation for that?
      - ajb 3y ago
        Sure. This is the relevant clause in my current home insurance policy: "You must take steps to maintain the Home in a good state of repair and take all reasonable precautions to avoid loss, damage or injury and to safeguard all property insured from loss or damage." These things are pretty standard - I would be very surprised if there isn't a similar clause in all of them. Which implies that, if you fail to do so, they don't have to pay up. The wording in your policy may be different. What are "reasonable steps" will depend on legal precedent. It may, for example, take into account that you're not an expert, and will probably include some reasonable time to get stuff fixed. But certainly it provides them the opportunity to deny a claim. Obligatory disclaimer: I am not a lawyer or insurance expert, get your own advice if you need it.

zebracanevra 3y ago

Thats quite a spread. Is it up to spec where you are?. In Australia we have 230V nominal, but the allowed range is from 216 (-6%) to 254 (+10%).

ajb 3y ago

Lots of devices have switched mode power supplies that will still output the same voltage. Last time I had a brownout the only thing that stopped working was the washing machine, and I thought that was broken. Paradoxically, it may be the lower voltages that are more dangerous, because it will result in a higher current draw from all the devices. Mains voltage has a nontrivial allowed range (in fact in Europe they increased it slightly so that devices would work across countries with slightly different original standards) but this is well out of spec.