Had a neighbor call Friday afternoon. She said her power supply on her PC went bad and she called her computer guy out. He replaced the power supply and plugged the computer in and in 2 minutes it was smoked too. He replaced the power supply 2 more times with the same result before she called me. I checked voltage at her surge strip, which had a red indicator light showing "surge", and I was showing 142 volts. My first thought was open neutral so I proceed to the panel and find 142V on each line to ground and 284V between lines. We live out in the boonies about a mile apart. I call the line super at REMC and tell him what I have. He says that makes 4 in our township this week and sends a couple of guys out with a new tranny. We have had several thunder boomers last week so it must have been lightning. The tranny was only 10 years old and didn't show any outward signs of damage. I told the computer guy the next time he has a customer call with a power supply fried, check voltage before he replaces it and plugs it in. He could buy a good Fluke volt meter for what a power supply costs, or at least for what he charges for one.
