>I have a house with very dirty electricity. At night I can watch the lights
>slowly dim and brighten. I'm not talking about the normal surges you see when
>turning on a vaccuum cleaner, shop tool, or other high current appliance. This
>is a fairly continuous, but random, fluctuation. The period of the
>fluctuations
>seems to range from a few tens of seconds to a few minutes. So far I
>can't find
>anything in the house that would be causing power surges like that. The power
>company has come out (during the day when its less obvious) and they think I'm
>nuts. The funny thing is that the house is only about 10 miles from a nuclear
>power plant (North Anna, Virginia, USA for the curious), so you'd think I'd be
>getting the good stuff.
>
Does anybody have any idea what might cause this? Or anyway to fix it?

   For twenty-five years I lived in a decaying Victorian mansion
   that had been wired with knob-and-tube in the 1920s. The service
   entrance had an enormous cartridge fuse inside the house.
   The silver plating on the end caps of this fuse had tarnished
   and resulted in a non-linear resistance in series with the
   power sourced into the house. It caused fluctuations like the
   ones you described. Clue: AC voltage measurement between the fuse
   clips and the metal caps. Pulled out the fuse, polished the end
   caps, reinstalled, kept a sharp eye on it ever after, as this
   could generate heat and be a fire hazard.

   Reg Neale

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