Re: The problems with X10 ...

[invalid@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Beachcomber)]

On 4 Nov 2006 13:20:18 -0800, "accidental plumber"
<aplayerinla@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>I always wonder this: have you unplug all your electronic and
>electrical appliances and tested?
>
>Because your neighbors typically have the same things as you do.  If
>you have a clean strong signal in your house, it's harder for outside
>devices' effect to travel far and affect your house.
>
>The exception is brownouts and power surge.  Brownouts are hard to deal
>with unless your device have high capacitance to buffer momentarily
>brownouts.  As far as noise goes, the chance of looking like a valid
>X10 code shouldn't be likely, unless it's constant bombardment, not
>surges.
>

Well... strictly speaking, it's your utility company might use a
capacitor bank to minimize a drop in line voltage, but that's only if
you are having problems with low power factor and that is generally
not a problem with residential service unless you live in a factory
district.  In most cases, it's a power company problem and there are
few, if any residences that switch in capacitance to correct for low
power factor.

A brownout is an extended-time drop in voltage to your service usually
caused by heavy loads (like summer-time peak air conditioning).
There is not much you can do about them unless you have a line
conditioner, which might also be described as a variable buck-boost
transformer that effectively changes taps on-the-fly.   Some power
company substation transformers will do this for you.  Not sure what
you mean by buffering capacitance unless you are speaking in a very,
very general sense, as in the stored energy of a ferro-resonant
transformer or a mechanical flywheel.
Beachcomber