High-Volt Response to Low-Volt Power

Question: Last summer and fall, Southern California Edison knowingly supplied many consumers in our area with extremely low voltage--voltage at times below the legal limit. From June through September, we had problems with three of our major appliances:

--In June, the washing machine would not operate, and a capacitor was installed.

--In September, our four-ton air conditioner would not operate.

--In September, our 25-inch TV lost color and the sides of the picture.

The problem in each instance was low voltage. In September, the voltage reading at our home was recorded at 202 volts. But we incorrectly assumed at the time that the appliances were at fault and called the appropriate servicemen, incurring bills of $242.72. We filed a claim with SCE for that amount, feeling that since it was negligent in supplying sufficient voltage, and in not notifying users of the precariously low voltage--and its possible effect on appliances--it was responsible for payment of bills incurred by consumers.

Four months later, we were notified that they would pay for the TV repairs only. The “reasoning” being that we should have called their serviceman first. We feel that this is merely an excuse for SCE not to pay the full amount. My vociferous objections brought an offer to throw in the air-conditioning payment, but no washing machine. I’m sure that the representative with whom I talked has his instructions to keep the payment as low as possible. We feel that we, and all consumers, are being ripped off since this public utility is benefiting financially from this sort of thing.

We know from SCE’s own servicemen that this is a monumental problem that is being kept from the general public.--J.C.

Answer: SCE’s logic strikes me too as a bit odd. If the TV set blinks out, I don’t think it would occur to me, either, to call the electric company rather than the nearest TV repair shop. (Although, ironically, that was the company’s standard advice at one time for consumers experiencing appliance troubles, a spokesman for Southern California Edison says.)

You’re quite right that all electric utilities are required by law--under the California Public Utilities Commission’s Rule 14--to “make every effort to supply continual and reliable service” to their customers. And, according to Bill Adams, staff engineer for the Public Utilities Commission: “We do step in and issue admonishing letters” to electric companies when a pattern of erratic and substandard service begins emerging.

But isolated instances like yours, Adams adds, aren’t all that common and, frankly, aren’t even all that well understood by either the PUC or SCE. When outages occur, they tend to be across wide areas, are deliberate and are announced well beforehand. During hot summers, when air-conditioning demands are at their peak, for instance, “brownouts” are a common strategy for making sure that the entire system doesn’t conk out in a massive blackout that can be near-catastrophic.

“Every user,” Adams says, “has a code number on his monthly bill, and if the electric utility is going to engage in one of these ‘rolling blackouts,’ everyone has to be notified beforehand that those customers, for instance, with Code 07, are going to be without service for a few hours on such-and-such a date beginning at such-and-such an hour.

“After that, their service is restored and another area is shut down.”

But isolated instances of low voltage are not only much trickier--and harder to explain--but usually take place without the electric company’s knowledge--before or even after the fact, according to Bob Hull, a spokesman for Edison.

Legally, the PUC’s Adams adds, the nominal voltage is either 120 volts or 240 volts--depending on the circuitry--with a minimum permissible voltage of either 110 or 220. On the circuits providing lighting needs, the maximum is 125 or 250 volts.

“On those 240 circuits where lighting needs aren’t present,” Adams continues, “the minimum is 90% of the nominal voltage--90% of 240 volts, or 216.”

And SCE, Hull continues, “tries to keep our voltage, plus or minus, within 5% of the nominal voltage. Appliance manufacturers build their appliances with a tolerance of about 15% just to avoid this sort of thing.”

So, how could the voltage in your home dip as low as 202 volts, which is way below everybody’s tolerance level? It’s a good question for which neither the PUC’s Adams nor SCE’s Hull has a ready answer.

“It’s not common, but it happens,” Adams adds. “And we don’t really know why, usually. Once in a while a circuit in the house will malfunction, and you get a high-resistance connection, but we don’t really know why or how.”

And how frequently or rarely it happens and goes undetected--because no one’s appliances are noticeably affected by the fluctuation--is equally unknown.

“A lot of it, of course,” Adams continues, “has to do with the appliances themselves--how well-built and insulated they are, how old they are, what size motor they have and what-have-you. You can have two identical appliances sitting side by side hit by the identical low voltage; one burns out and the other doesn’t. You can have another that would have gone out at a higher voltage and still another that would have survived an even lower voltage.

“Incidentally,” Adams says, “low voltage, contrary to popular belief, is deadlier on motors than a surge of high voltage.”

The fact that Southern California Edison picked up two of the three repair bills you encountered is a little perplexing at first glance, SCE’s Hull admits, but this apparently has to do with the fact that the burnout of the air conditioner and the TV set took place during an abnormally extended and intense heat wave (last September and October), when fluctuating voltage wasn’t all that uncommon, and the utility simply conceded the point.

“According to our records, though,” Hull says, “the burnout of the washing machine in July--on the bill for which the repairman noted the low, 202, voltage--didn’t get called to SCE’s attention.

No Response to Offer

“If she’d notified us at that time,” Hull maintains, “we wouldn’t have had any contention about the washing machine. Our records suggest that there really wasn’t anything wrong with the washing machine.” He also notes that SCE made you an offer on the washing machine this March, but that you haven’t responded yet.

There’s still a lot of mystery about why and how these spot-drops in voltage take place.

“People,” Hull continues, “add things all the time--air conditioners, freezers, pool heaters and what-have-you--and it drives up the usage on their circuits and on the transformer serving maybe five to 10 other homes. So, when you’re overloaded like this, the voltage does dip, but we don’t know about it.”

Not, apparently, until appliances in the affected homes start conking out.

Q: The gas company persistently suggests to all its customers various ways to reduce gas consumption, so maybe an idea from a single person could be helpful.

According to a recent story in your paper, nearly a fourth of all households are now occupied by singles. OK, when I shower in the morning, the water heater is turned on to fill the tank with hot water, and during the 12 or 24 hours between showers, the tank is automatically kept full of hot water.

I pay to heat maybe a dozen tanks of water for the one or two I normally use. Some people may like that water available for washing dishes or clothes. I only wash a dish when I want to use it, and the laundry does my clothes.

What I could use is a switch to turn off and on the (now) automatic water heater. The convenience of having hot water always available to me is costly and wasteful, and I’m already frugal. I haven’t used gas to heat a room in 40 years in Southern California, and I only close the windows against a blowing rain.--M.N.

A: It restores a man’s faith to see that kind of frugality in this Disposable Age, and it’s doubly impressive in the light of your Beverly Hills return address.

The switch you mention harks back, of course, to the days before the development of the thermostat, when we didn’t have any other options: If you wanted a shower, you went down to the basement a couple of hours beforehand and relit the pilot light.

Frugal or not frugal, though, heating water is a long way from being a backbreaking expense in anybody’s house. According to Stan Slankard, one of Southern California Gas Co.’s four “weatherization” instructors, the average family of three taking 7 1/2-minute showers once a day spends about $116 a year on the luxury, or about $39 a year if they take them communally. And this, roughly, should be about what it is costing you too.

Bundle Up Heater

Hot water, according to Slankard, a conservationist whose job consists of instructing rank-and-file gas company employees on conserving gas, is normally maintained at about 140 degrees, and how often the thermostat kicks on and off during any 24-hour period to maintain this depends primarily on where the water heater is located--in an indoors closet, outside the house or what-have-you.

One procedure you might put into force at negligible cost, Slankard adds, is to swath your heater in an insulated blanket and set your thermostat back one notch. This will drop the maintenance water temperature down to the 115- to 120-degree range and sharply reduce the recycling “because there isn’t much standby loss during the day because of the insulation.”

(There is an experimental “set-back” thermostat on the market, he adds, that will automatically set the temperature back to the 80- to 90-degree range for most of the day. But because the average water heater isn’t constructed for this much flipping back and forth, it hasn’t yet been endorsed by the gas company).

There’s another approach to your cost problem, but, Slankard thinks, the cost-effectiveness of it in your situation would be questionable. That’s the instantaneous gas water heater, which has no storage capacity at all, no standby loss and no recycling. You simply step into the stall, turn on the tap and get instant shower-temperature water from a small water-heating unit located on the pipe leading to the bathroom. Unfortunately, the initial investment is about $400.

Your best bet, Slankard believes, is the insulated blanket and lower thermostat setting mentioned above plus the installation of a “low-flow” shower head. This cuts both your water usage and your gas costs about in half all by itself. And with the additional savings from the blanket and the lower thermostat setting, your hygienic costs should really be negligible.

Especially by Beverly Hills standards.

Don G. Campbell cannot answer mail personally but will respond in this column to consumer questions of general interest. Write to Consumer VIEWS, You section, The Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053.