911 and the local electrical company have been contacted. A storm came through, we lost power, it came back but fluctuates. We then noticed that the local transformer was on fire. I was alarmed at the sound and concept but my husband wasn’t that phased. How common is this and how much should I worry? We are not in a fire prone area.

The white ground is going out to the pole and the green one is my grounding rod, should the green one not be bonded to the pannel not the bus bar?

Note not an electrician, but my copper water lines feel live and a few switches in my house give us shocks

Back story:

For the past year I have a set of LEDs in my kitchen, and recently they started turning off, changing brightness, switching to different modes all by themselves. I thought maybe the controller went bad and was failing, so I replaced it a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday they started exhibiting similar behaviors again.

So I’m wondering now if the power supply is failing and it’s causing the controller to do weird things.

I grabbed my multimeter to see what kind of voltage the power supply is putting out, and it’s giving me 52V. The power supply is supposed to give 24V output (see screenshot below), so I’m confused and was hoping someone could help me understand why I’m getting over 2x the voltage?

I do apologize if this is not the right place. I saw an askelectronics community, but their rules say no electrical, and at this juncture I believe my question is electrical. If there is a better place for this kind of question, I would appreciate a pointer to the better place.

Edit:

I am a dummy. Less so as of right now, but yeah, it was user error. So I learned today that the multimeter can read both DC and AC voltages, and my power supply is 24V in DC, while I was reading it in AC. 🤦‍♂️ Once I switched to using DC, the power supply read 24V (in multiple outlets).

So I'm a refrigeration mechanic and I want to continue being a refrigeration mechanic. I love my job and I have no interest in becomming a full time electrician. However having the certs to do some light electrical work would be very helpful in my job because my state is very strict about what you can and can't do without being a licensed electrician. It is tremendously annoying that I can rewire an entire rooftop airhandler running 480V 3phase and drawing 100A without breaking any laws but I would be breaking the law if I replaced a faulty breaker in a pannel or fixed a miswired disconnect switch. I can't even run thermostat wire here without a low voltage cert. But as far as I can tell the only way to get those certs would be to quit my job which I love and apprentice for several years under an electrician. I don't want to wire up entire electrical panels or setup industrial motor drive cabinets, but being able to ocasionally replace a bad GFCI outlet or a crappy disconnect would be nice.

Is there any way to become licensed to do even light electrical work without having to quit my current job?

Hi all. Looking for advice, my fan died so I bought a replacement to find it's not the same model. It's too late for an eBay return now.

I have pretty much zero electrics knowledge beyond wiring a plug 15 years ago. I work in IT so "open it, move each wire one to one, one by one" didn't seem too challenging. But I have a two wire fan to replace a three wired one. I believe I lose the timer function?

So should I just buy the right one and go with Plan A? It's a small bathroom only about three times the size of the shower cubicle. I remember being told I would need more throughput than the cheap thing in place when I moved in. This one would only stay on as long as the light is on, is that right, so not expelling moisture for a while after use?

Should I still use this one but get it installed by a professional if it's not like for like? I've identified the breaker for the lights, have bought a voltage tester screwdriver thingy, will stand on a wooden stool and hold my belt behind my back with my left hand. That's all the safety awareness I have.

Thanks in advance. UK based if it makes a difference. "Image uploads appear to be down" in my lemmy app so apologies, will try to add photos later.

Put in a matter-enabled switch here for house exterior lights. This was the only photo I took -- the wires prior to starting work ;)

Hi all. I have a bathroom fan on a simple switch but wanted to upgrade it to a time. When I pulled the switch out of the wall I found one ground wire, and a singe wire with some of the sheathing removed to loop around the other terminal.

Can I cut the looped wire and connect it to the load / line on the timer? Then I connect the ground to the uncapped ground/neutral on the switch?

Edit: the advice worked.

I put the unlooped black wire with one of the black wires on the timer. I cut the black loop and tied the two wires to another black wire on the timer. I put another grounding wire on the metal box and attached it to ground. Likewise, I pigtailed the neutral bundle and connected to neutral.

It took a few tries to get the box to close correctly since the timer is so big, but it worked out! Thanks again all.

Typo in the screenshot godDAMMIT

He and I worked together at a supply house. Im not sure i can shoplift one from the others.

Damn.

How do i tell him it doesn't have to be his?

Bonus:

Service call for a smoking main 200a breaker. Ended up shifting the entire bussing up to get fresh bus clips, covered the top of the bussing protruding beyond the backing with a comical amount of mastic, installed a new main breaker, and told the client they need to change that service yesterday. Old 80s/90s Crouse-Hinds, those mains are garbage.

Hello,

I'm trying to shop around for a possible extension cord for this 250v, 50amp outlet.

We'd be trying to use an electric dryer from this, but would preferably have it extend nearer a window on the other side of a garage (~25-30 ft, generous measurement). We'd likely pick up an older, used, basic dryer model, and not sure what those electrical needs will specifically be, but trying to plan ahead in case something needs to be altered.

This is the closest I've found which might work:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/VEVOR-Extension-Cord-25-ft-10-Wire-Gauge-Heavy-Duty-Outdoor-Welder-Extension-Cord-with-3-Prong-30-Amp-Power-Extension-HJLJQ10-3-25FTYCXV1/320761106

Most other cords with 3 prongs had them sort of curved/circular. Yet, this says only 30 amps.

Is there different or specific wording which might assist my search? Or would something like the above cord work for our situation?

Thank you for taking the time to read my post. I appreciate any advice or directions.

Hello,

Thank you for stopping to read my post.

I am trying to help my grandmother locate the breaker for a 250v outlet as she needs a new dryer in her house and is switching from gas to electric.

If the picture came through correctly, would anyone here have any suggestions on which of these might be connected to said outlet?

From what I could find online so far, it's supposedly one of the breakers with two switches attached together. I'm just not sure which, as the outlet itself says 50amps and none of these specifically list that number on (what I assume) is the amp amount marked on the switches. All the electrical at this house is so disorganized no one knows what's what right now (which I am definitely going to hire an electrician to remedy soon). And I also don't have anything to plug into the outlet to simply switch things on/off and see if power gets cut to it and she needs a dryer sooner than we'll be able to hire said electrician.

I'm hoping to test the outlet before getting her a dryer, as it just hasn't been use for almost 2 decades, which I read requires switching off the breaker for the outlet prior to connecting a multimeter but I'm limited on what I'm familiar with electrically, and money is extremely limited so trying to save her money by doing what I can before getting an electrician called in for anything significant.

Any advice, suggestions, or direction are greatly appreciated.

Either way, thank you again for taking the time.

I'm trying to wire Shelly 1PM gen 3 to my wall outlet. Is the diagram correct?

I was installing a TP-link HS210 3-way smart switch in my dinning room. On the side with the mains power I do have a neutral wire, but on the other switch I have no neutral wire from the wall (for that breaker). I do have a switch that's on the kitchen breaker right next to it, though, and that has a neutral and ground.

In my breaker box, both the neutral and grounds appear to be on the same row of lugs.

Running the neutral wire from the switch to the ground works, and I'm thinking it's because it's all going to the same place. This specific switch didn't explicitly say to do this, but other switches I've installed did.

Now, I could run the switch's neutral to the neutral on the kitchen circuit. I didn't at first because I had the other switch wired wrong, so I thought it was the no neutral switch causing issues.

I want tu buy a wind turbine from Aliexpress but im not sure how to build or how does the controllers work

What i can do? You know a tutorial or forum where i can find info of theses generators?

How can I bring this forward so the junction box is accessible?

Do I just get enough single gang extension rings to bring it out far enough to sit flush with the drywall?

Or do I add an access panel on the drywall?

I sold my hot tub 😢. We ended up just decoupling this conduit and cutting the line. I’d like some advice on the best way to simply cap these off in a way that doesn’t become a problem later when I move out.

Not an electrician, just hoping somebody is nice enough to help out.

The electrician who installed it basically “stole” the connection that goes to the garage to install this. I’m still not exactly sure what he did behind that box, but I think I’ll have to figure that one out later.

Any help appreciated!

Some of you may recall my previous post about a ~20V potential between my electrical ground and my concrete slab. That's still not resolved - it's currently sitting just under 10V.

Today I have a new mystery - to me anyway..

I'm sitting at my desk and notice that I got a tingle from the outer shield/shell of a USB-C cable. I got my multi-meter and measured 65V from the cable to me with my bare feet on the slab! It drops to about 16V if I lift my feet off the floor. I immediately assumed the charging brick it's plugged into was faulty, but just in case I took a more measurements and found that the another similar charger has a similar offset, the "ground" part of a TRS cable plugged into an amplifier is similar, the accessible metal shield part of a USB-A port on an ASUS ChromeBox is similar. I assume that's not normal?

This is a new slab on grade build. Ground and neutral are properly bonded - I checked a few outlets and ground to neutral is ~0.3V.

Edit - I don't think there is any safety risk - I measured 0.3μA current.

I live in a small community at the end of a long line in Atlantic Canada. We get frequent power disruptions so I have installed a backup generator. I have a bit of a home lab, and don't like my server to lose power with no warning so I've recently installed a small UPS to keep it running in the gap between my power going out and the generator starting. The UPS logs data and lets me access it.

I'm wondering if I should be concerned about my input voltage. The blue line in the minimum for the hour, the amber is maximum for the hour. The zero period on the 8th of March was when I had the power turned off to do some work.

The default configuration for my UPS has it cut over to battery power at 88V, so it seems some significant variation is expected!

I tried searching my power company web site but they don't seem to publish anything about guaranteed, or even expected, supply voltage.

The 2 best Youtube vids re electricity for me –

y2u.be/bHIhgxav9LY

y2u.be/oI_X2cMHNe0

Got my bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 2015 and I didn’t know the energy flow and the surface charges that Derek explained. Maybe I didn’t listen close when my electromagnetism mentor taught Poynting vector. But no mentor of mine talked re surface charges. These wow me –

1. In the Poynting vector simulation, the energy flowed outside the wire, not in the wire.
2. The wire had a corner angle of π/2 but the energy flowed in a curved way.
3. The cross product of the electric and magnetic fields is the key thing. The electrons in the wire don’t carry the energy.
4. Energy can flow even if we don't have a loop of wire.
5. The 🔋 is the shepherd. The surface charges are the sheep dogs. The electrons are the 🐑. (The electric field accelerates the electrons.)
6. Ohm’s law, mesh analysis and nodal analysis are 👍 but don’t cover all the cases. You must use Maxwell’s equations if you want or need a high level of accuracy. You can use Ansys hfss for simulations with Maxwell's equations. I wonder if using quantum electrodynamics is better. Or no since we’re not dealing with a quantum system?

Location: USA:MN

To preface, I'm a refrigeration mechanic, so I only know just enough about three phase power to get into trouble hook things up and make sure they work.

I'm working on a large remodeling project in my home durring which I want to future proof as much as I can (because foam insulation makes changing things later a bitch). I'm going the full 9 yards running conduit and everything. As part of that future proofing I am planning on upgrading my service from 100A to 200A. However, since I'm upgrading my service anyways, I am also strongly considering getting a three phase service. If I ever wanted to stick an electric car charger or other big piece of equipment in then a three phase connection would be handy to have. It also seems like the kind of upgrade I want to get done while the house is mostly gutted rather than trying to shoehorn it in later. So my questions are as follows.

1. Do I go with a 120/208V 4 wire service or a 120/240V 4 wire service? My provider offers both to residential customers in my area. There are additional restriction on the service drop for the 240V option. None of those appear to apply in my case but it might make 240V a bit more of a pain to get.

1. Do I need to worry about phase balance? Since this is for a single family home most of my power draw is going to still be 120V between a single phase and neutral. Obviously I want to split circuits up between the 3 phases to try to draw on them evenly, but it's never going to be split perfectly evenly. Is drawing on the phases unevenly going to cause any sort of issue?

1. Are there any other footguns to watch out for here? For example, is having three phase power going to mess with my home insurance rates or anything like that?