220VAC from broken neutral feed

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SUMMARY

The discussion centers on a case where a broken neutral wire caused 220VAC to appear on all outlets in a residential setting. The issue arose after a squirrel damaged the neutral wire from the utility pole, leading to dimming lights and humming appliances. A PG&E technician confirmed that the loss of the neutral wire resulted in abnormal voltage readings due to transformer winding configurations. The phenomenon of dimming incandescent bulbs despite increased voltage is attributed to insufficient current flow caused by the broken neutral.

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NavinRJohnson
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My brother had something (squirrel?) break the neutral wire from the pole to the house a while back. He said all the lights dimmed, some of the appliances started to hum loud and it blew a couple breakers. After resetting the breakers and poking around a bit he eventually took a reading, found 220VAC on all the outlets and eventually spotted the broken wire from the pole. PG&E (West coast US utility company) service guy said it was the neutral wire broken.

Couple questions...
- How in heck can voltage double if neutral is lost? Is this a problem with certain transformer windings/wirings? I can't think of another way for the second phase to feed back to neutral except through the x-former.
- Why would lights (incandescent bulbs BTW) dim if the voltage increased? I would expect them to be brighter but, maybe not enough current with the broken neutral?
 
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