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Post your wall voltage If you are so inclined....

Here in Hong Kong, we have nominal 220V, but I find it dips in the afternoons to around 218V, coming back up in the later evening/night. Mostly pretty stable, given all the residential, office and industrial demands made on the grid here. They switch an extra power supply into the grid for the daytime, and have more than enough capacity for the demands, so adequate power isn't a problem. Noise is another issue, though: the power can be a bit "dirty" at times.

For different gear in different rooms, I use two UPS units, an extreme isolation transformer (looking for another few of these; really, really helps with noise floor, on a par with running a dedicated line, or maybe even better!), and several variacs. My office-room system, which is usually just a receiver (external tuner for AM), and which gets the most use in hours, usually runs at 118-9V during the day, and 220 at night, off a UPS. I have a variac sitting there, but I haven't bothered tweaking up the voltage that last 1-2 volts in the afternoon, as I don't think it hurts the gear (and might actually help with longevity?) to run it just slightly under. I can't hear any difference. The best system in the living room I keep at 220V stable, with both the big isolation transformer and a big variac. The best single clean-up I've discovered (along with the extreme isolation transformer for the main system), was putting my ceiling fan on a variac instead of the usual fan speed controller. Got rid of an annoying level of background noise on AM radio, and a general layer of noise on the circuitry. I think the next step will be putting noise-elimination devices on my air-conditioners, refrigerator, etc... But Voltage is good enough that I only use a variac to bring it up a couple volts in the afternoons for the main system, and that is probably being overly picky... but when was that a bad thing with audio? :D
 
Mine runs ~119.5, with min/max from 116-123.


EDIT: Monitored with meter for roughly 6 hours and came up with min/max/average of 114.4/124.8/120.4.
 
Here in Sendai we are on the Japanese standard mains of 100 Volts at 60 Hertz. There are areas of Honshu further south that are on 50 Hertz, so all Japanese electrical appliances are specified for both. Most of our grid in this region comes from nuke. All the vast rail system runs on electric including the Shinkan-sen (bullet train) that runs near our home. The interesting thing is, virtually any time I've metered, the Voltage is within 1% of 100 Volts. BTW, I have a 100>120 ACV step-up, isolation X-former running on the 115 Volt tap to run vintage American gear.
 
line voltage

Usually between 128 and 130, I am the only house off the transformer 100 feet from my front door. Also have 7 hydro plants within 25 miles of here that I can think of , there may be more.
 
130vac does seems kinda high. Especially if some of us are using vintage gear which may contain already marginal PS components.
 
Here in Duvall, WA, it's usually around 118.3 or so during the winter, and 117.3 in the summer... One winter storm, we didn't have any power, except for just enough to make our AC-powered smoke detectors produce a high pitched and very quiet whistle. When the generator's running, 125.

-J
 
Volvo242GT said:
Here in Duvall, WA, it's usually around 118.3 or so during the winter, and 117.3 in the summer... One winter storm, we didn't have any power, except for just enough to make our AC-powered smoke detectors produce a high pitched and very quiet whistle. When the generator's running, 125.

-J
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Be careful what you run off that genny, not the cleanest power. Fugly sine waves as a rule.
 
As an Electrician in the central part of the US, one key thing to remember is that during the summer the voltage tends to go down and amperage climbs due to the ambient heating on the aluminum power grid and during the winter voltage tends to be more stable with less amperage. Most devices are rated to work between 100V-130V, thus any more or less can shorten the life span of any electrical device!!
 
130vac does seems kinda high. Especially if some of us are using vintage gear which may contain already marginal PS components.
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My thoughts exactly. Transformers, even isolation types, are not so expensive. I don't think I would power up my Dynakit ST-70 on a 130 VAC mains.
 
OLD THREAD ALERT!

Since getting my Furman line conditioner/surge supressor set up on Friday, I've seen a range of 113VAC - 121VAC. Of course, the 113 was around dinner time which I guess is close to peak during a northeast winter. 121 was about 3:30 AM on monday night when I didn't feel like sleeping...

I guess my power isn't TOO bad since it hasn't spiked too low or high in about a week, but IMHO, 113 is getting a bit low.

The voltage goes down about 1 volt when the oil burner kicks in.
 
Here in far NW Florida, running off Escambia River Electric Co-op (AKA Florida Flicker and Flash) I've seen some mean-ass brownouts. One such brownout lasted a good 15 minutes and line voltage sagged to 66V. Surprisingly enough, I didn't lose a single piece of equipment. I've watched - in a 5 minute period - the line voltage vary from 113V to 122V. At the moment, I'm seeing 119V +/- about 3%.
From all the roller-coaster supply voltages I've seen in this house, I've only lost one device: a 12K BTU air conditioner.
 
Mine usually runs 123-126V in the summer. Right now it's running 125-128V. I ended up putting a 12.6V bucking trafo on one of my amps. I've never measured it where it was below 123V.
 
Thinking of mains voltages, I recall that they vary from 100V in Japan to [IIRC] 240V in Russia. That, in turn, makes me wonder why so few people from Russia post here, or on any other audiio site [that I know of] for that matter...
 
123.8 at the moment. Pretty lightly loaded though. Mostly my Yamaha CR-440 playing mellow Xmas tunes, with an old Sony HT receiver pulling duty as a sub amp.
I've seen AC here as high as 125, but haven't measured frequently enough to estimate average or range ( ... yet).
 
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