>Ed,
>
>I used to live in Huntington Beach, CA where there is an oil-driven steam generating power plant. Anyway apparently for those who lived close to the plant their regular voltage was somewhere around 130v and light bulbs had a half life of just a few months. *g*
>

We have the opposite problem up here - the CT area had 3 of the major nuclear plants shut down about 4 years ago, and this summer was the first time one of them came back on-line (CT Yankee, at 50% capacity.) When the summer gets hot and the ACs all go on we're lucky to get a dim glow out of a 300W incandescent...