• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Power Line Interference -- Make Utility Co Fix?

S

Schuyler

This is more of a legal question, but one engineers would know about.

The electrical power lines around my neighborhood --- the ordinary, telephone pole kind, not high tension wires --- ruin AM reception in the car and spoil it in my home.
I heard quite some time ago that the electric utility is supposed to do something about it if someone complains.

If this is true, how do I describe this so I sound like I know what I'm talking about? Is there a particular code of law I can cite?

(Clearly I'm a layman, so dumb it down. Thanks.)
 
The FCC usually refers these types of complaints to the local power company, which should have one or more people who are assigned to investigate and remedy the situation. As for how well they do so, it depends on the company.

Here's the closest thing I can find on it:
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/interference.html

I was just looking at this board, thinking about asking the FCC if they have any place where you can file a complaint, just to make it "officially" on-file, if only for tracking purposes...most of the FCC web-based complaint system is for everything EXCEPT consumer interference complaints.

The local utility will usually send you a checklist, which asks you to try some simple tests, as well as log the times, weather conditions, etc that accompany the interference, which helps them analyze what is happening. That way, they don't waste a lot of time if the interference is intermittent.
 
I do some work at an Open Area Test Site (for testing Radiated Emissions). When we had a issue with interference from power lines in line with our test antenna, we used a directional antenna to triangulate the source of the interference right to the offending power pole. The interference obliterated everything from 30 up through at least 300MHz.

Of course, working for a large company, the utility was probably a little more receptive.
 
And beside which, not only were you were able to prove that the utility was the interferer, but also save them the time/expense of locating the exact source of their problem.
//
 
As I remember (I wasn't the one dealing with the utility), they weren't very responsive until we tracked it down ourselves.

And our testing was severely hampered until it was fixed.
 
Usually helpful if you can narrow it down to a pole. Also helpful to "talk-up" the utility folks to get a real number to call, not the listed number which puts you through phone hell to find a warm body.
 
The noise may not be the fault of the utility in any way. You and your neighbors may simply have a wealth of
noise producing crud.
First turn off your stuff and see what you have that might be a significant noise contributor locally.

I once had the power company leave a Dranetz logging power monitor on my line for a week to confirm what I already knew.
The next door neighbor's lamp dimmer was a pig, and the noise was radiating back up the line into my house.
I keep my own RF eviroment pretty clean, but I had noise coming in on the lines.

I added a 30-amp RFI and EMI filter to each of my incoming distribution AC lines, which greatly dimnished the noise
I picked up in the house. I only have 60 Amp AC service so this was cheap.

Naturally I can't do anything about directly radiated noise from a neighbor, but at least for AM it can be nulled most times.

I think there should be multi-pole filter capacitor banks at each substation, and simple filters at each distribution transformer.
Ideally, there would be properly engineered devices which did not kick back so much wideband RF noise into the AC line.
 
The utility company is suppose to maintain the system but they don't go looking for problems, there in lies the problem. I live in a city where power line interference in some parts of town has taken over the AM band. The local signals let it grow until it affected them. The stations informed the municipal utilities about the problem but at this point repair it was cost prohibitive. The radio stations started to flex their muscles over part 15 issues and told the utility, "you have to fix it". The utility brought reality into the conversation pointing out if they are made to fix this now extensive problem it would require a rate increase and they would be very vocal of the reasons for the rate increase. I don't blame the municipal utility but the radio station owners for not catching this issue when the first buzz was noticed.

For what it is worth, I grew up in a city where the AM's rode herd on the local utility and the band is still quiet throughout the town today. The utility will work with radio stations curbing part 15 issues, just do it over time and not all at once.
 
I hadn't planned to bring it up, but since you've already mentioned it....
We had some severe PLI problems near our studios a couple of years ago. The power company did some work, but didn't completely fix it. When we asked. later on, about coming back and finishing the job, we were told by their maintenance guy that the corporate folks had ordered them not to do anything (except in an outage) with maintenance until they got the full rate increase they were demanding. The State Public Service Commission had only given them part of what they demanded.

Sometimes, while driving around the valley, I almost envy the South, where frequent storms keep the crews busy putting up new poles and (unintentionally) "fixing" most of the old, bad lines.
 
There was a time when the FCC would step in on your behalf under the "knowingly interfering with a radio communication."
Probably not the case any longer. After all, the FCC has approved AM IBOC .... the biggest noise generator since the triac dimmer.
 
We have arcing on power 34.5 kV lines around a 50 KW AM site that made it impossible to do NRSC at our usual place. Noise floor was only 20 dB down! Only way to get rid of it would be to float some mylar balloons through the line (the transmitter’s got a generator).
When a power co tries to do the "broadband over power lines" they tend to clean up the unintentional (arcing) interference and replace it with "intentional" interference.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom