Report Power Line Radio Interference

[VK2KRR]

I saw this on QRZ and thought some people may be interested to see this.

"Industry Canada has just posted contact information to report Power Line Radio Interference. This information covers all the major Power Line companies in Canada".

http://forums.qrz.com/showthread.php?39 ... nformation

[VK2GOM]

Interesting... it was a real bang head against wall exercise here to get our power company to do anything about arcing insulators that gave me S9 noise from top band to past 70cm.

It ranged from "not our problem" to questioning my techniques as to how I knew it was their pole causing the issues, and questioning my antenna used, radio, engineering qualifications, calibration certificates (?) etc.

Only when I contacted the ACMA to lodge a formal complaint was anything (eventually) done about it.

This appears to be the way. The girl on the front desk of the power company will try and fob you off first. If you cave in and go away, they save money.

My advice is simply to bypass all the customer service tripe and lodge the complaint directly with the ACMA in the first instance once you are absolutely sure where the RF problem is.

73 - Rob VK2GOM / GW0MOH

[VK2KRR]

I've never tried going to the ACMA myself, but will keep that in mind if I ever need it again.

When I had issues a few years ago, after trying with the power company a number of times, I just went to the Electricity Ombudsman, and things started happening very quickly after that. This eventually also involved an ACMA inspector visit to verify my claims of which poles causing problem.
I should think in this day of paying double the price on power bills as I was then, I should think they would be a bit more forthcoming to do maintenance when requested. Especially when we go to the trouble of tracking down the offending pole for them.

So if you do try track down an interferring pole, make doubly sure you get the right one!

[VK2AAH]

This month's QST reports the FCC having issued a citation to a guy with a noisy bore pump who despite previous warnings that he was causing interference to licensed services failed to stop causing interference. That is service...

Cheers


Richard
VK2AAH

[VK3BY]

I also have had problems with regards to H.V. interference. It has been 20 months since I first reported it and problem still not resolved. There was more than one H.V. pole causing problems but the power company will only fix one thing at a time. I have had the ACMA out three times to confirm the interference is still power line related. Each time I have to report this back to the power company before they will act.

I have also had the Victorian Energy Ombudsman Office involved and they were helpful in resolving one of the repairs.

This last fault I have had to pay for an independent report to locate this last pole. This report was sent to the power company and I was given a repair date of April 2013 for repairs but this now out to June 2013.

Good luck if you have power line interference in the Victoria.

David
VK3BY

[VK2TS]

I've never tried going to the ACMA myself, but will keep that in mind if I ever need it again.

When I had issues a few years ago, after trying with the power company a number of times, I just went to the Electricity Ombudsman, and things started happening very quickly after that. This eventually also involved an ACMA inspector visit to verify my claims of which poles causing problem.
I should think in this day of paying double the price on power bills as I was then, I should think they would be a bit more forthcoming to do maintenance when requested. Especially when we go to the trouble of tracking down the offending pole for them.

So if you do try track down an interferring pole, make doubly sure you get the right one!

Hi Lee

I had issues a few years ago which turned out to be a noisy Transformer in a Sydney Water site about 500Metres away and the local ACMA inspector located it and then advised them and was replaced a few weeks later.

I think the trick with power companies is to to keep ringing the power company until they get so sick of you they fix it to shut you up.

Cheers

Tony
VK2TS

[VK3MEG]

a friend of mine was told by an acma inspector it get the cheapest am radio to track noise down then if the noise is there say I'm having problems with the am broadcast band I can't listen to my radio they will act very quickly