I am having a problem with my breaker box. One side has 100 volts the other has 148. I don't know what caused it. I can't use my refrigerator or stove. Does anyone have any helpful info.

 

Call your power company emergency repair line right away. You have a broken neutral conductor in the service entrance. If the problem is in the power company wiring outside, they will usually fix it for free. If they do not find the problem in their wiring, you need to contact an electrician ASAP. I recommend turning off all your breakers until the problem is repaired as significant damage to your appliances can occur.

 

Ditto! .........................................

 

If it is a broken neutral, then there may be a best order to turn off the breakers because each breaker that is being turned off can cause the A and B voltage difference to become more or less. If you turn them off in the wrong order the differences can becomes greater and greater, then some of the devices may get fried.

 

How would someone determine the correct order to turn off the breakers?

 

On second thought, the best solution is to turn of the panel breaker -- the one that turns off the entire house. Then you won't have to worry about what orders to turn off the breakers.

Let's say you cannot turn off the entire house and have to turn off the breakers one by one. In that case what you are doing is a balancing act. You want to keep the total load on circuit A as close to the load on circuit B. The circuit with the lighter load will have a higher voltage. So you would start unplugging devices from the outlets on the circuit with the lower voltage. You can help the balancing act by adding cheap dummy loads (e.g. incandescent light bulbs) to the circuit with higher voltage.

When you are down to the last few pieces of devices, each one unplugged may cause a large swing in voltages. Here's when the dummy loads are useful. If you have lots of dummy loads plugged in, they will have a more significant effect on the voltages than you last few pieces of devices, so that the voltage swing won't be as much.

This is just theory. I've never done this before.

 

Might work in the Apollo capsule, but seems futile on a residential panel. In all likelyhood the neutral is randomly making and breaking every time the wind blows the wires around on the pole. Kill the main or at least turn everything off and unplug the expensive stuff.

 

I had the electric company check their side and it was ok. How do I check for a loose neutral?

 

So you saw the poco test the voltage at the meterbase with a load on the service?

 

Unless the problem is only affecting one circuit in the house I would call in an electrician. You would need to work too close to the main lugs in the panel.