anyone married?

[Wade Lippman]

We are having a power failure now. Some things like LED lights were still on. I got a voltmeter and found we had 30v.
They fixed it in 3 hours, but what sort of failure could leave 30v?
Is it dangerous to stuff plugged in?

[John K Jordan]

We are having a power failure now. ... Just got power back. All seems fine. Wouldn't you think that 30v should hurt something?

Married? Only 46 years here, still learning. I'm not sure My Lovely Bride could handle anything mechanical or electrical without specific training. She is amazing at everything else, though - for example, we eat like kings, vacations are planned to perfection, and all the bills are paid. :-)

I suspect 30v would not harm most things that have power supplies like chargers, TVs etc. Things like AC motors might try to draw current while staying stationary but at such a low voltage the windings might not even get hot. Another thing about the voltage you saw - it might simply be low-current induction from a line somewhere, registering 30v on your meter but with nearly no current/power behind it.

I would worry more about any surge that accompanied the return of power, but looks like you are ok on that.

JKJ

[Aaron Conway]

Complaining about your wife on a public forum...is that a divorce lawyer I hear coming your way? :D

[Brett Luna]

We are having a power failure now.

We use to have a lot of those, including a straw-breaker that lasted 2½ days. We had looked at whole-house generators off and on for several years but were put off by the cost. After that outage, they didn't seem so expensive anymore and we bought a 10KW unit. Nowadays, she's like Lieutenant Dan up on the roof screaming "You call this a storm??? Is that all you got??? and laughing like head case.

[Michael Weber]

Actually I think that anyone with no electrical knowledge and with no background in how the breakers were installed might easily find it logical that everything was off in a box with the switches all in one position.

[Jay Jolliffe]

Most breakers are marked on & off...

[George Bokros]

30 volts for something like a refrigerator or freezer could harm the compressor.

[Chuck Wintle]

We are having a power failure now. Some things like LED lights were still on. I got a voltmeter and found we had 30v. I had to leave for a doctors appointment, but told my wife to turn all the breakers off, as I was worried about what 30v might do to something.

When I got home I noticed that the lights on the printer were on, but we didn't have power back. I checked the breaker box. She had turned all the breakers on the left side off, and left the ones on the right side alone; so now all were pointing in the same direction. Apparently she though that all the breakers on the right side are normally off?

She was a professor at the University of Rochester, so she is not actually dumb. How could a person do that? I am bewildered.

I probably should have had her trip the main breaker, but didn't want to do that because the generator wouldn't shut off when we got power back.
---
Just got power back. All seems fine. Wouldn't you think that 30v should hurt something?
electricity is quite mysterious to some people regardless of intelligence.

[Rich Riddle]

The doctor would have waited the one minute it would have required me to turn off the power.

[Wade Lippman]

The doctor would have waited the one minute it would have required me to turn off the power.

The outage hit as I was walking out the door. It took me a while to figure out why some of the lights were still on, and by then I was badly late. But, yeah...

Still don't know why we had 30v. It couldn't be a phantom voltage because it was actually powering lights.

Divorce Attorney? Naw, it's worked for 30 years.