Voltage in Ground

[GoldDigger]

The power company has not pin pointed the cause yet. Last week they worked with the TVA, and they found the stray voltage at my property dropped 10 volts (16 down to 6) when they cut the power to my entire street.

The engineer mentioned prior to testing that they may have to run a new neutral line along the main road on top of the mountain. The trees up here fall on the lines often and he was worried about how many splices may be present on the lines. Not sure if his opinion changed on that after their observations. They’re still working with the TVA to continue investigating.

The fact that the voltage dropped that much, but not to zero, strongly suggests that the primary neutral problem is relatively close to your street rather than far down the line. Possibly one or two streets away if they are fed by the same primary lines.

If possible with clearance to primary hot lines, a clamp-on ammeter on the POCO primary neutral in varous places may help them to pinpoint the problem.

 

[Ruthrj]

The fact that the voltage dropped that much, but not to zero, strongly suggests that the primary neutral problem is relatively close to your street rather than far down the line. Possibly one or two streets away if they are fed by the same primary lines.

If possible with clearance to primary hot lines, a clamp-on ammeter on the POCO primary neutral in varous places may help them to pinpoint the problem.

I agree. I shared this on our area’s Facebook page, and a guy a couple streets down along the primary line reported having this problem. I shared our engineers contact info with him to hopefully help further troubleshooting efforts.

 

[Ruthrj]

I have good news!

I haven’t confirmed myself yet, but the power company found a bad neutral splice at the bottom of our moutain. They measured about 5V this morning on my spigot prior to replacing the splice. A cold front just came through so power demand is pretty low at the moment. After the splice was fixed they measured only a volt or two. It sounds like we’re good to go, thank you all so much for your help!