Need Advice on Overvoltage Problem

[Pangloss]

I suspect I have a problem with my house's electrical infrastructure, but it's possible that the problem is external, with the utility company. Any advice I can get would be appreciated, especially regarding long-term monitoring and what kinds of technical details I should read up on.

 

On a regular basis some of the equipment in my house complains of overvoltage. Specifically, the UPSs in my computer room (my working office) and on the home theater equipment. I also used to have a Panamax line conditioner on the home theater equipment and it used to complain about overvoltage as well. I've widened the tolerance on the UPSs to a whopping 88 to 142 VAC, but it doesn't seem to help. At least once every other day every UPS will beep for a while, maybe 10-15 minutes, before returning to normal. Sometimes this condition can be prompted by the switching on of high-voltage equipment, like the microwave oven. Other times it just seems to be random.

 

I had an electrician out today and he mentioned that the utility company was operating some trucks right down the street so maybe they know about the problem (it's very hard to work with their customer service people and get a straight answer, because they only seem interested in whether or not the lights are on). He checked over the fuse box and the outside panel and said everything was fine there, and he replaced the outlet my home theater equipment is using with a 120 amp outlet (why does this matter?).

 

I'd like to set up some sort of computer-based monitoring and logging of the actual voltage in the house, but I know how to go about doing that. Any advice would be appreciated, as well as any related suggestions about the problem in general. Thanks!

[swansont]

Since it's Florida, I have to wonder if it coincides with thunderstorms. You could be getting a surge from the strikes or outages elsewhere, though the UPSs complaining for that long doesn't seem to fit.

 

There are dataloggers you can buy, or get a multimeter/voltmeter with a USB connection if you are going to use the computer to log the data.