"Dirty" electricity?

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Originally Posted By: tom slick
A bad neutral can cause one leg to go high and the other low. Check multiple outlets in multiple rooms and with a good load an outlet in a different room.


Can you be a little more specific? I've checked voltages in several outlets around the house already.
 
If you have a buried power cable from the pole to the house, that could be the culprit. Mine went out. The power co. said the wires fused together (to the neutral?) which caused the power to my home to double, or should I say, everything went to 220V. The only things that got fried were a few bulbs and the microwave.
 
Sensitive electronics like computers and TV's use power supplies. Those power supplies take the household voltage and convert it to filtered DC, which is then used to power the circuitry. It's even inverted back to AC to power the TV illumination. Those power supplies often have a floating ground and will quite often accept power from 50 to 70HZ and 90 volts to 250 volts without any issue. If I were to guess, your screen issues are not related to dirty power. However, they could be related to power spikes or surges such as lightning.

Computer UPS's on the other hand, can be quite intolerant of frequency and voltage swings. Any time my power is substandard, the various UPS' in my home beep their alerts.

I suggest having a good UPS on your TV and cable/sat box for the protection against surges and unnecessary outages. Both can be damaging.
 
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