Power line noise

[KB5MD]

I would like to hear what others have done to get their power company to
do something about line noise.  I have made numerous calls and even one personal visit to their field office here.  They give all kinds of promises but absolutely no action.  80 meters is pretty much useless here and 40 meters
isn't much better.  This is very frustrating.

[KX5JT]

"Dr." Roy!  Haven't heard you on much but I haven't been on a whole lot myself.  But trying to change all that starting tonight.  Sorry about the powerline problems, that has to be really frustrating.  I've heard that writing the FCC with documentation about contacting the power company just might get them to light a fire for you.

[WQ9E]

Roy,
Until you have success in getting the power company to clean up the mess have you checked to see if the interference is primarily from a single direction?  If so a separate small receive loop may allow you to operate by putting the noise source in the null of the loop. 

When the wind is very strong in the winter I get an intermittent buzzing noise from the east and using a separate receive loop I was able to null it from well over S-9 down to S-4.   I built a simple loop using a pair of 4 foot dowel rods and wound a 4 turn loop and put a simple single transistor preamp at the loop (9 volt battery powered). 

Before building the loop I tried one of the MFJ noise silencers which uses a noise "sense" antenna which is used with your regular antenna to remove the noise via adjusting the phase and strength of the signal from the noise antenna.   It was helpful but the loop was far more effective for me.

[Sam KS2AM]

I would like to hear what others have done to get their power company to
do something about line noise.  I have made numerous calls and even one personal visit to their field office here.  They give all kinds of promises but absolutely no action.  80 meters is pretty much useless here and 40 meters
isn't much better.  This is very frustrating.

OK, I'll bite. How do you know that the "line noise" you are hearing is coming from the local power companies equipment and not some other source ?

 

[K5WLF]

Anyone I've ever talked to or heard about that had success with the local utility fixing interfering power line devices stated that they had done their research, provided good documentation (remember the #1 rule of scientific research -- If you don't write it down, it didn't happen) and. in many cases, pinpointed the location of the offending device to a particular pole. At the very least, it was narrowed down to a 50-100 yard area.

I was an electrician for about a dozen years, and I met a lot of power company guys in that time. Most of them are good guys, some are hams. But they all cover more area than they should really have to and they're busier than hell. If you make their job easy for them, i.e. tell 'em which pole has the arcing insulator, you'll generally have pretty good luck getting it replaced or repaired in a short time.

[K3ZS]

The ARRL web site has some procedures and if followed, they will coordinate with the FCC if you can't get the power company to cooperate.  I had S9+ noise show up on 80 and 160.  I found the general area of the noise and contacted the power company.   They sent a form which I sent back.   The noise was gone one day.  Shut your own power off, to confirm that it is not coming from your house.

[Jeff W9GY]

A noise canceler can work wonders, providing the noise is a SINGLE source, and the noise antenna is some distance away from the main receiving antenna.  The noise antenna should be large and matched to the input of the canceler on the band you are working on.  (without a sufficint amount of noise signal, things won't work) The noise canceler requires careful adjustment and patience.  If you change frequencies, it will need re-adjustment.  I have been able to achieve more than 20 dB cancellation of power line noise (defective lightning arrestor). 

The Time Wave ANC-4 seems to have a more sensitive noise inut than the MFJ, and in general does a better job.

[flintstone mop]

The ARRL web site has some procedures and if followed, they will coordinate with the FCC if you can't get the power company to cooperate.  I had S9+ noise show up on 80 and 160.  I found the general area of the noise and contacted the power company.   They sent a form which I sent back.   The noise was gone one day.  Shut your own power off, to confirm that it is not coming from your house.

Many times we forget our own house.....Plasma TV's and switching PS's even next door to you

[W1AEX]

It looks like you have already got a thread full of great ideas, but I'll add my own 2 cents. I had a lightning arrestor blow about 3/4 of a mile away from my house. It gave me a steady S-9 +20 dB blanket of noise from 160 meters through 40 meters. It could easily be heard on a broadcast band radio while tuning between stations. The good part about it was that it was always there. Intermittent issues tend to be the most difficult ones to deal with, until you establish the conditions that provoke it. At any rate, taking care of the issue I described turned out to be a pretty big project, and I learned a lot along the way.

1. As Fred said, confirm that the noise is not caused by something in your house.

2. Make lots of recordings of the noise and archive them with dates, weather conditions, and the frequencies you hear the noise on.

3. If you have a directional beam, use it. Tom K1JJ suggested using a 6 meter beam on 75 meters to see if the direction to the noise could be established. This worked well. By using the null points off the side of the beam which were very sharp, I could establish that it was either SW or NE from my location.

4. Use Google Earth and print out a satellite view of your location, along with the entire area for a mile around. Lay a ruler across your house and inline with the direction of the noise and draw a line. Take a look along the line to see what it intersects.

5. Use the map and take a few rides in your car while listening on whatever rig you might have installed. I was fortunate to have a rig that can receive AM on 10 meters, 6 meters, 2 meters, and 440 MHz. I was quickly able to establish that my noise was SW from my location, but I could not get close to the noise.

6. Call the power company AND keep a detailed log of who you speak with and when. Try to pry a contact number from them. They will be reluctant to give this to you the first few times you call, but make sure that you get a name so that you can ALWAYS ask for that person and bring that person back to the problem.

7. The power company here seems to have different layers of people who deal with this stuff. The first layer will listen, but might do nothing until your 10th phone call. Keep calling. Call often. Make sure they know your name. When you've exhausted this first person, ask for his supervisor, and repeat the process. Call often. Keep notes. Review all the dates and times of your previous calls with everyone you speak with. Make them listen to your recordings over the phone. Be a PIA but be nice.

8. Eventually, someone was assigned the task of driving around my neighborhood with a van while listening to the BCB. He didn't hear much. I invited him to stop by and see the noise for himself on my equipment. He really wasn't interested, but I got to speak with another supervisor after insisting that it was still an issue. After my 3rd or 4th call to that supervisor, I was finally referred to the "Power Quality Division".

9. The Power Quality Division of CL&P employs 3 guys who handle the whole state, and they are equipped to troubleshoot this stuff. A few days later, someone from Power Quality called and made an appointment to visit my station. He connected a receiver with a storage scope to my antenna and saved several images of the noise. Then he began to drive around to match up the noise. I showed him my map and he laughed and said a noise that strong couldn't be as far away as where my line intersected a powerline across the river, in another town.

10. Three days later, he found the noise, which of course was right where my pencil line intersected the powerline, across the river, in another town, 3/4 of a mile away, on a 34kv line that meandered through deep woods. He called me on the phone and asked me to switch my receiver on as the crew began working. As soon as they pulled the lightning arrestor out of service, my receiver fell quiet.

The whole process took about 6 weeks of badgering the layers of obstacles they surround their tech group with, but being persistent, keeping careful notes, and pointing them in the right direction made it possible to resolve the problem. By the way, Rodger's suggestion of using a receive loop is an excellent idea. When this was going on, I did begin to play around with K9AY type loops, and found that I could always work noise-free by using them. My cheap and simple variation on the receive loop is detailed here:  

http://members.cox.net/w1aex.fn31/loop.html

One last thought. Using YouTube can be very helpful. In another instance that did not have any effect on my ham radio reception, it was invaluable. I used my cheap-o digital camera mounted on a tripod in the back seat to make this:  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKs8I-bPyRM

It generated quite a bit of interest, and in fact the ARRL sent out a well-equipped technician, along with a representative from the EIA who was meeting with reps from the NAB. The NAB is becoming quite concerned with the flood of electronic pollution that is hampering their market(s). They are very interested in ways to assist consumers with resolving interference problems, and also preventative measures to abate noise from appliances. The local AM station engineer also became involved after viewing the video, and the Powerline company sent out several people to investigate as well. The problem mysteriously disappeared, back in May, but it was pretty firmly established that the noise was coming from either of two different residences. We are suspicious that it was an imported non-type-accepted satellite receiver, which apparently are notorious for this type of noise. Using YouTube allows you to email the link to the video giving you an easy way to demonstrate the problem with people who need to fix it.

At any rate, that's my 2 cents. Hope you get it fixed soon!

Rob W1AEX

[N4LTA]

If you track it down to the power company - they will fix it. They have no choice. The FCC will send a letter if needed but you have to prove it is the power company.

The ARRL has volunteer registered engineers that can write a letter if necessary - again though, you have to isolate the source.

I had a serious problem here and Duke power ended up reconductoring a 3 mile section of line and cleaned it up nicely.
I am a registered electrical engineer in 4 states and a ARRL volunteer. I have numerous contacts at the power companies. They generally will react and repair a noise source - but there are thousands of noisy power line devices and they normally don't correct them unless they are causing problems.

[flintstone mop]

ROB said
2. Make lots of recordings of the noise and archive them with dates, weather conditions, and the frequencies you hear the noise on.

YES!!!! We had a very good Amateur and electrical noise finder guy in Washington DC. Worked for PEPCO and he could tell what it was just by listening to the sound...

[W2PFY]

The best way for anyone to solve a interference problem is to move away from it!

[KC9LKE]

 I am an electrical distribution designer…..big deal

Along with the other great info on this topic this is my $0.02

BTW where in the heck is the cent symbol on the keyboard??

Anyway

You should not have to do anything but pick up the phone, but like anything in society it’s a mixed bag. You will find anything from “oh it’s another ham nut case” to full apology and prompt service.

We are towards the top. We have some pretty high teck equipment to diagnose line noise. Sniffer, directional antenna, laptop, GPS all connected together. The maps are pretty impressive. We also take interference seriously, my last and current super would be “on it” in a heartbeat.

Anyway 

1) You shouldn’t have to but try to locate the source. Possible sources are: Arresters, some fail with age, Porcelain end bells and other insulators that are not under tension, i.e. “slack spans”, and a myriad of others. The method that “KYV” uses to locate is prolly the best. Search for post on this board. I don’t advocate “sounding” all the poles in the neighborhood, remember it’s not your property. You could mention it to a lineman in person, he’ll probably respect the “help”. YMMV. When you are SURE that you found it get the pole number. That what we understand. We don’t work with addresses.

2) Find the customer rep in YOUR area and speak to the same one every time. The problem is getting past the lip service people. Once your talking to someone that’s paid by salary your in! They usually care. You could also try a “distribution designer” they are the ones that understand the parts of distribution that are old and troublesome. They are also the ones that usually sniff out interference.
 
2) Be as credible and professional as you possibly can.
 
3) Log your correspondence.

For the legal part:
I didn’t take the time to read the ARRL suggestions but they are probably a pretty good start. It is an FCC complaint, but if they are truly and absolutely belligerent you can pull out the big guns and suggest that you are going to file a commission complaint. That should wake them up. But it’s the absolutely LAST resort. TRY to work with them first.

Devils advocate:
As most on this board know everything east of the Mississippi has been hit hard. The crews in some areas are very lean. Some have been away in other cities for months. I still have work from May that hasn’t been addressed.

Hope I helped

Ted / KC9LKE

[K5UJ]

Jeepers, now I know why some of y'all aren't ever on the air.    But seriously, I went nuts a year or two ago in the fall trying to track down noisy street lights.  I eventually realized I was blowing the whole winter operating season on that instead of having fun operating.   On those cold winter nights when the bands were hot, I was in my car putting up and down streets trying to find bad lamps.  I gave up and just started using a rx loop and the MFJ noise canceling box.  For now (luckily) the hash and buzzies and line arcs have been nullable enough for me to back off on the rx gain and hear most signals okay.  If it is 20 dB over 9 and taking out 3 bands that's different, but for everything else, I'd work on antenna and phase shifting/nulling methods, otherwise you'll blow all your time trying to smack these things down and never get to enjoy your radio.   

[WA5VGO]

I guess we are lucky here in the Houston area. The utility company has a cracker-jack RFI crew with all of the necessary equipment. They have a direct telephone line to their department. I can call them on the telephone and explain the situation and they will usually have it repaired within a few days.

Darrell, WA5VGO

[k4kyv]

Jeepers, now I know why some of y'all aren't ever on the air.    But seriously, I went nuts a year or two ago in the fall trying to track down noisy street lights.  I eventually realized I was blowing the whole winter operating season on that instead of having fun operating.   On those cold winter nights when the bands were hot, I was in my car putting up and down streets trying to find bad lamps.  I gave up and just started using a rx loop and the MFJ noise canceling box.  For now (luckily) the hash and buzzies and line arcs have been nullable enough for me to back off on the rx gain and hear most signals okay.  If it is 20 dB over 9 and taking out 3 bands that's different, but for everything else, I'd work on antenna and phase shifting/nulling methods, otherwise you'll blow all your time trying to smack these things down and never get to enjoy your radio. 

If it takes 6 weeks to get the problem solved, a good part of the operating season has already passed. Sometimes, just as one problem has been fixed, another one pops up.

You would  think that after a century and a quarter of electric power distribution, the technology would have by now advanced to the point that this problem would not be so pervasive.  One thing that has made it worse was a few decades ago someone got the brilliant idea of replacing copper lines with aluminium wire, to save money.  Some power companies even ripped down their existing original copper and sold it for scrap. Aluminium has a property of behaving like a fluid, even in its solid state. It looks and feels like a solid, but under pressure, it tends to gradually flow away from the pressure point.  The clamps that connect the pole pigs to the main wire work loose over time, and need occasional re-tightening.  Sometimes you can actually see the arc at the clamp after dark.  In power co. jargon, this is called a "hot clamp".  A lineman once told me his company considered this an emergency worth an after-hours call, since the hot clamp can cause failure of the wire, and result in a downed live power line. It wouldn't surprise me if the money they spend chasing these problems, plus the losses due to the wasted electricity (these are power "leaks", the electric equivalent to a leaky gas or oil line), is more than what they have saved by getting rid of the copper.

[flintstone mop]

Yea DO NOT 'sound' the utility pole. The hardware could come loose and BOP you on the head.
Most of my problems so far has been intermittent, on-off, cycling street lights........So another check is your noise only at night or 24/7?
PENN POWER has an on-line trouble sheet for street lights.......I just turn in the ones causing my problems. They call me the next day and within a week the noise is gone. The neighbor down the street might not like the light working again, but my problem is gone.
I can watch the noise on my 'scope connected to my R390A I.F. and can tell if it is a street light or arrester.
Fred

[K3ZS]

Look at the noise on a scope with it on 60Hz power line synch.  If the waveform is steady, that would rule out other sources not associated with power line.   Not to mean it proves a power company problem.

[W9HW]

The Timewave ANC-4 I purchased here last winter works very well and has salvaged the AM side of my shack for operating while my wiz bang Icom 7700 can remove the noise just fine on it's own . Give it a try if the power company drags it's feet too much or is totally unresponsive . We must succumb to technology every once in awhile for the sake of operating .

[KA2DZT]

Being in the antenna installation business for nearly 48 years I would deal with noise problems on a regular basis.  The noise almost always ends up in the TV pictures, folks complained about their TV long before they would complain about radio reception.

I could go through dozens of very interesting case histories, but I'm trying to keep my post short (under my usual 5000 words).

In general, I found that noise and other types of interference came from the power lines about 50% of the time and the rest from other sources.

Almost always noise that you hear in the HF bands will also be present in the lower VHF bands (50-70 mHz).  Finding the source of the noise is not that difficult if you go about it correctly.

I used a 3 element yagi cut for CH2 and a very selective field strength meter.  The meter could see signals down to microvolts and it had an audio output for head phones.  I set the antenna up on a 20ft mast and took measurements as to the direction of the noise source.  Nothing novel about this.  The trick to the whole process was to NOT take measurements near the roads or the power lines.

I would set up in open fields or in big parking lots.  The farther away you were from the source the more accurate the direction.  Of course you need to take a number of readings to pin point the location.  Many times the source of the noise was 3/4 of a mile (or more) from where the complaint was made.

Once I found the correct pole or location I did some additional close-in direction finding with the yagi on a shorter mast.

At times I would have to use the drive-around method if there wasn't any open fields or parking lots to take measurements.  I still used the FS meter with an antenna mounted on the truck.

Never failed to correctly locate the source of the problem, even when the power company would disagree and send crews out to fix hardware on different poles, only to have to return and repair hardware on the pole that I located as the source.

One last comment,  I never saw any two cases the same.  Every situation was different.  Anyone that claims they can tell what the cause of a noise or some other type of interference by just listning is only guessing.  As to TV pictures,  I've seen static in pictures that looked similar to other static only to find that the problem was caused by two completely different things.  I also have seen very similar types of problems with power lines cause completely different interference effects in TV pictures.  I've seen everything from soup to nuts cause radio and especially TV interference.

Fred

[Opcom]

concur on VHF. I used an Alinco DX-J2 handheld receiver in AM mode to pinpoint poles from which the biggest noises came. 55MHz seemed to be best for me, others may vary. I chose the freq by finding a pole with only a little noise, and tuning up through the frequencies until the type of noise was unmistakable and the reception was kind of weak. With the unit on the dash and volume up, I drove around in a spiral pattern and found some very noisy poles.

[flintstone mop]

All is not lost Rob,
If your vehicle has an AM radio capable of tuning 1710 or a portable Sangean type shortwave radio. (it's going to be a trick to hang the whip antenna outside whilst you drive) (OH and make sure your car is not causing wild ignition noise) Just drive up to street lights that are out. These may be cycling and causing your problem. Usually when they try to start back up there's that BUZZ that lasts for about a minute and then stops.
I found a street lamp that was propagating a couple of blocks when it tried to start up. It caught my eye one night when it went dark and then after cooling tried to start.
A lot of the street lamps will buzz while you are under them as you drive by. Those aren't the problem.
You have to figure out if it is a steady buzz or it comes and goes.
80M interference will be much harder to find, if it's power company.......it can propagate for a couple of miles. My interference guy found a bad insulator arcing into a 'dead line'. The dead line ran for a couple of miles making it hell to track down an 80M interference.
Fred

[K5UJ]

Fred, there are probably over 100 h.v. vapor lamps within a few blocks of my QTH.  I've done all you have advised but you have to understand that being in a town, I can spend several nights and maybe narrow it down to one or two poles and get a fix but in the mean time 2 or 3 others have gone south.  It's just a never ending thing--you can easily blow all your ham time and I have very little of that anyway with a job, keeping up a house, the usual daily time sucks etc.  the best way to deal with it is with rx methods that reduce or eliminate the problem on my end.  Stations I work who can run a few hundred watts with good antennas are nice too.   

[W1AEX]

To be sure, the best solution is to find noise sources and eliminate them. Unfortunately, much of the noise encountered by those of us who do not live on 1000 acre estates surrounded by water is from our neighbors' consumer appliances spewing crud.

I count myself lucky to live in an area that doesn't have a lot of noise on the grid from the power company, and except for one neighbor who sits about 150 feet from my wire antennas, the other homes are over 200 feet away. In spite of that, when I listen with the 250 foot inverted vee, and view a spectrum shot of 75 meters, I'll see little buzzy oscillations not originating at my residence, every 60 kc that show up as bumps of S-4 or S-5 noise on an otherwise quiet band. If my wife switches on the 11 year-old Panasonic CRT television in the living room (it just won't die) you can add little oscillations every 15 kc from the horizontal sweep oscillator. If she jumps on the elliptical, you can add another set of oscillations that are modulated with a "vweep, vweep, vweep" sound matching her work rate. If the microwave is running, or the paper shredder, or my Dewalt cordless drill is charging, or the cell phone charger is actively charging, you can add that crap too. What you end up with is layers of noise that raise the background crud present on the whole band.

I had a friend who owns a plasma television who claimed it didn't cause any interference. I had to see that for myself, so I stopped by one morning and he turned his receiver on and set it to 75 meters. His noise level was sitting at S-9 + 10 dB before switching on the plasma! When he turned the plasma on, of course it caused no change, it was buried in all the crap that was already there! He thought that was what 75 meters always sounded like!

Here's where I agree completely with Rob - K5UJ. It's nice to have defensive measures in place to deal with this onslaught. It doesn't mean you should give up on resolving noise problems, but it's awfully nice to be able to switch to some quiet receive only antennas that exhibit noise immunity. I use two 85 foot vertical loops, one oriented for N-S reception and the other oriented for E-W reception. So far, under the worst noise conditions, those loops are noise free, and they hear anything the 250 foot inverted v can hear. Not always as strong, but nearly always quieter during daytime reception. I use them exclusively for tuning around on the AM BCB and they work great from 160 meters - 40 meters. They are cheap, easy, and they just plain work. Those who use the K9AY design will notice the similarity, minus all the control stuff because I let them run with a bi-directional pattern.

http://www.w1aex.com/loop/loop.html

My friend with the noisy 75 meter reception problem installed one of these and was stunned to be able to hear stuff he never knew was there. Take a minute to watch the first embedded video on the page above for a short demonstration of the difference between listening on my TX antenna and the RX only antenna. The second embedded video is a five minute long trip across the AM broadcast band with the Flex connected to the North-South loop. My parting thought is that killing the noise sources will be a continuous battle unless Part 15 is enforced in a more preventive manner rather than forcing hams to deal with each occurrence as it shows up.  

Rob W1AEX

[KL7OF]

Bake (buy) a cake and take it down to the line office when you go.....Donuts work too...