It's a troubleshooting tool. It works both ways, it can tell if the mains voltage is polluted/distorted and it can tell if a specific piece of equipment is polluting mains.trobbins said:Is this to be a tool to meet a purpose (ie. with specs or requirements of some kind related to steady signal magnitude or frequency or transient characteristics - and related to a detrimental performance of some equipment that might be affected by anything other than single frequency with constant amplitude mains) or to equipment that may generate detrimental signals?
Now, we all know that conducted EMI/RFI is a bad thing, but thare are no hard rules as to what is acceptable or not and what are the consequences, although the UL/CSA/CE standards set limits.
Just an example: most electricity suppliers have to guarantee less than 10% voltage drift, but how it affects equipment varies a lot. Light bulbs may be more or less luminous, motors may be more or less powerful, but a computer may stall or go into overvoltage protection and your old style CRT TV may explode.