RE: Electrical 'Brown-out' a rare dangerous fault'. Your report that 20,000 homes and businesses were without electricity on Tuesday, October 15.

Here in Weston-sub-Edge at least, we suffered a worse fate.

We did not have a 'black-out' - we had a 'brown-out'. Prolonged brown-outs are particularly damaging to some types of electrical equipment. For instance, electric motors in the larger fridges may stall and then overheat and burn out.

The relays in our cooker were rattling like castanets before I hurriedly switched off.

Brown-outs are recognised when ordinary filament lamps glow with an orange brown light instead of full brilliance.

These conditions are rare. In 50 years concerned with the use of electricity this is the first I have seen on-shore on a public supply in the UK though I have met them elsewhere.

Instead of being the 240 volts required by law our supply at home varied between 97 volts and 137 volts for one period of about 40 minutes and another of about 20 minutes.

It was 132 volts when I reported the fact to npower's call centre.

They seemed more concerned that their computer had my address wrong than they were in arranging a switch-off.

In case any of my neighbours have suffered damage because of this very rare fault, I took photographs of a voltmeter to provide evidence in the case of a claim against the supplier.

ROY JENKINS, Meerings, Church Street, Weston-sub-Edge.

l A SPOKESMAN for GPU Power UK, Caroline Boots, said: "We are not aware of the terminology but there was a dip in voltage in Weston-sub-Edge on Tuesday, October 15. Nowadays manufactures are required to meet safety guidelines that allow for this.

If consumers have suffered damage to appliances then it's the manufacturers who they need to contact." She added that there would be no compensation for complete loss of power to 20,000 homes because the power was not off for long enough.