As always, please feel free to point out where I am wrong
OK, I will!
You might be thinking in overly under voltage, like stall?
Going from 108VAC to 136VAC would not be a huge difference in most items operational characteristics.
"Inductance loads.. (motors etc )
These generally always draw more some will draw a LOT more power, some will not change much at all"
Yup, mostly.
Now consider this... my house... right now.
Laptop (switcher power supply, drawing 40~60W? I dunno), 2 x 11W CFLs, a 13W CFL, a few phantom loads (doorbell and furnace transformers, 2 cordless phone wallwarts, remote controlled CRT TV, etc).
Then the gas furnace kicks on for 5 minutes? Then the fridge, then the meat freezer?
It won't take long before a day's worth of a laptop use is passed by a few minutes of motors running.
Back to "These generally always draw more" (amps).
120V to 136V. 13.333% more volts?
13.333% more amps too? (probably not, usually)
28% increase in the bill?
Less % lost in transmision?
More % billed to the user?
More profit.
Bulbs will draw about the same current. That's still a 13% increase in billable sales. Same postage, secretary, bookkeeper, paper, envelopes, etc.
More sales = More profit
A Prof I had back in the day was previously a Big Shot EE at GE in the '70s.
He laid out a dishwasher schematic, specified with "110VAC" incandescent indicator bulbs, as was the general term of the day.
The underlings paniced. They only had 120VAC rated bulbs. They set up a production run of 110VAC bulbs.
It turns out 120VAC bulbs are designed to run at the 136VAC in ticky-tacky housing developements where the 'loaded' voltage of a neighborhood could vary widely. Almost unloaded at 10AM to almost overloaded at 5:30PM?
BUT (in EE talk) 110VAC bulbs are NOT designed for that much voltage.
After about 10 gazzillion dollars in waranty repairs, the big shot EE was a Prof at the university. Guessing thats a pay grade reduction or 2? LOL
I swear, the guy was dumb as a stump.
G-
(yes, I ignored power factor)
PS - Frackers,
In the analog cell days, I used to work a lot in the boonies.
There is an itersection with 2~3 cell towers by different companies.
At the intersection, there was NO signal!
(link is an experiment, mostly)
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&rlz=1R2TSHB_en&biw=1210&bih=613&q=intersection+OF+528+and+oh+87&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl