The Green: I have to wonder how long ago that was because I've been in the power industry since the mid-80's and one of the first things I had to do as a new engineer was deal with a large customer who had power quality problems due to harmonics. In my experience harmonic considerations have been rather routine, particularly since solid state devices that inject harmonics have been prevalent. Unless it was very long ago, or those engineers were unusually ignorant, I'd be inclined to suspect they were simply lying because they didn't want to fix the problem, or couldn't fix it due either to expense or company policy.jimlongley wrote:I don't disagree about CFLs being weak at best, the real world is a tough place. Years (decades actually) ago I participated, as a "field engineer" in a test of a system/scheme to multiplex several telephone lines onto a single cable pair, actually something the phone companies had deployed for a long time in a "two on one" arrangement, but aimed at putting four, or even up to eight, lines on a single pair of wires (which, by the way, is how Alex Bell accidentally invented the telephone). Great idea in concept, worked fine in a controlled environment and in a lab, and eventually implemented in controlled circumstances, but it sucked in the field. Just one day of recording with my spectrum analyzers showed that the whole scheme was unworkable, and despite entreaties from the Director of Engineering Services at NY Telephone and the Director of the lab at Bell Labs that was pushing the thing, I would not rescind or revise my report to the VP for upstate NY, that it was my opinion that these devices would generate more trouble reports than they were worth. I had all of my measurements recorded and was able to show, despite their arguments, that unacceptable interference, crosstalk, and loss of bandwidth (leading to poor voice quality) were all endemic to the deployment of the device in the field.VMI77 wrote: . . . Just about everything you're saying here amounts to this: CFLs may be good in theory, but they don't live up to the hype when they're deployed in the real world. You can have CFLs, I'll take cheap incandescents any day.
The voltage criteria you're quoting vary depending on where you're taking the measurement. The is no requirement for the outlet in your home to be at 114V or more --it may well be 110V in some places.
I don't know of any power company claiming that the only frequency on a power system is 60 Hz. Just the fact that utilities install devices like line traps are explicit admissions that harmonic frequencies exist in power systems. Any number of things cause harmonics, and utilities have been aware of their existence since harmonic theory was developed.
Yes, the voltage criteria do vary, but I did state up front that it was a vast oversimplification, to explain the whole thing would take a textbook and a couple of weeks of classroom training followed by a couple of years of field experience.
I knew several engineers from several power companies whose official response to my letter asking them to correct a condition where they were carrying and even generating harmonics was that they only carried 60Hz. I went through long and painful education processes with these engineers, and in one case, after proving, by demonstration with spectrum analyzers, the they were the ones transporting and delivering the harmonics to my telephone line (again a long and convoluted subject in itself) the same engineer's response to a separate issue in a different part of our mutual territory was that the power company only carried 60Hz. I would be willing to bet that if you called the power company today to report excessive harmonics on your power line that you would initially be written off as a kook and given the 60Hz reply, and that it would be a long battle to finally get through to their technical engineering department, and then a new long battle to convince them. I did it too many times over the years and have participated in too many such investigations since then as a ham radio operator trying to help fellow hams get noise problems abated.
Yes the power companies are aware, at least tacitly, that harmonics exist, and they even place capacitors and load balancing transformers to mitigate them, but they can never do away with them entirely, that's the nature of the beast, and they also seem to have this "set in concrete" attitude that once a transmission line is designed and in place it is good lie that forever. Loads change, houses get built, businesses come and go, and the power company never moves its capacitor banks, and frequently doesn't even load balance proactively. I spent months trying to get one to replace a defective transformer, told over and over that it was "within norms" and one day it exploded at the high load point of the evening. Turns out that every time they sent someone to check it, was in the middle of the day, with little or no load. They should know better, but they didn't put that knowledge to use.
Just because they know it doesn't mean that they are willing to do anything about it.
Once again, oversimplification for brevity, and believe me, this is brevity.
The Blue: If the typical consumer calls the power company they are virtually guaranteed to be talking to someone that knows little or nothing about the power system, and nothing at all about harmonics. There is not really any public information that would enable someone outside the system to contact an engineer with experience relevant to the problem.
The Red: In fact, I'd say that they're unlikely to do anything about it. I don't work with distribution anymore, so maybe policies have changed, but I don't think most companies will even attempt to do anything about harmonics unless the problem is unusual and very visible...primarily because there isn't much they can do about it without either angering the customers who cause or aggravate the problem (and those tend to be the biggest customers) or going to great expense. And BTW, the policy is generally to advise a customer having problems to install his own protective devices.
