I have a customer/ friend that called me and said his light in his pool kept blowing. 6x in the past 2 years.so i went over to check. i tested voltage at the light and got 19v in the socket.was supposed to be 12v. went to trans. and got 19v load and 133v line!!
I tested the main lugs on panel and got the same voltage and 268v across hots.
i called fpl and they sent a crew out there the same night.i also kept checking in with them and they first said they had to change the meter. then they said the tranformer was too close to the meter and didn't have enough room for voltage drop. they couldn't figure it out for 3 days.i finally got ahold of them again and they said they had to fix something at substation.
1 week later they finally got the voltage down to 122v.
i talked to the homeowner and found out he blew up 2 computers, 1 dryer (maytag), bulbs, 2 pool pumps, and the worst part about it is his bill has been around $450 a month for the past 2 years!
he's a very conservative type,don't like lights on, no tv, does minimul laundry, keeps ac barely running, solar heat.

what would high voltage do short term and long?

florida power and light don't think they did anything wrong

i know on paper higher voltage means lower power but there has got to be a breaking point for too much votage.it's gotta boost resistence and cause a demand for mor power, right?

thanx for your help-----------------------

My guess is that the utility replaced the transformer, or made a voltage tap change back at the substation. Of course they are going to tell the customer that nothing was wrong. I would verify after this change what his bills are, there could be an unrelated issue to a higher voltage. High voltage in itself would not necesarily cause high utility bills.

And they probably have a clause in their terms of service that says they can supply you with anything from 60-15,000VAC. Worth a few min checking into the terms of service. You might be able to get the "power quality surcharge" refunded for the period...

For a resistive load, the power will increase with an increase in voltage (P=V^2/R). The increase in power from 122V to 133V is about 19% in this case. Reducing his bill by 19% still gives close to $380/month, though. It sounds like something else is wrong, or his power usage is much higher than he claims.

Some loads will maintain nearly constant power regardless of voltage, but I don't know of any that would draw less power at higher voltages. Perhaps you are thinking of power line loss, which is lower at higher voltages because the current is lower for the same power.

You said they changed the meter. Why?

he had an old style meter and they wanted to start their. they changed to a digital.


his new bill was $250 and that was for 1/2 the month at high voltage and other half of month at regular.

It sounds like the high bills started with the meter change. Has anyone compared actual meter readings with the bill? Either the meter is reading wrong, the readings are being recorded wrong, or (assuming they are doing a remote read on the new meter) the wrong meter is assigned to his account, and he is paying someone else's bill.

high bills ended last month w/ the meter change and work at subbstation. before that the bill was $450 for two years.
so for first half of month he had the high voltage and the second half hed had regular

My first thought was whether Florida has any applicable statutes limiting the voltage to certain tolerances.

For years here in the U.K. our power companies had a statutory duty to maintain the declared nominal voltage +/-6%, giving an upper limit of 254.4V on a 240V supply.

yes actually it's 10%

The high voltage shouldn't make that much difference in the power bills. I'd suspect a problem with the old meter.