Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Electricity Issue - Voltage drops

Been getting a lot of thunder/lightning storms this summer, seems like a few times a week. Some worse than others...lost power numerous time but no issues thus far.

Today we have been getting voltage drops. The lights dim and fans slow down. I have not noticed any other problems. It doesn't seem to effect any audio/vido equipment or the computers. What equipment/appliances should you worry about when this occurs. This is obviously not normal and how serious is this?

Computers can be very sensitive depending on their power supply. Quick voltage drop can be enough for resets and loss of data. If you have a lot of these, a simple UPS might be a good idea. No need for a multi-hours one, just enough so that if it is just a glitch, your equipment won't notice, if it is a true failure, then you'll get a clean shutdown.

Thanks for that info. Now since you mention that last week on the computer it just reset itself a couple of times . It was doing it during a thunder storm with heavy rain though and we did not lose any power that night. Hmmm, I wonder if this was occuring before today. Could this cause any damage to sump pumps?

No idea about sump pumps!

Quite possible the sump pump(s) are causing the drop if they are running constantly during or after a good rainstorm. That could be especially so, I would think, if you had two going.

Lol, when I turn on my Denon AVR, the lights in the family room dip for a second.

When I turn on my TV, the IQ of the family dips for a second.

!!!

I see your problem. Just change your default channel from Fox News to anything else, and then the second it takes you to change to something else will be eliminated.

Fox news is the best, watch it all the time.

It depends on the type of load. Motors will typically draw more current at lower voltage (since power remains constant for an induction motor) and could theoretically sustain some damage.

This link has a nice simplified discussion of brown-outs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_outage