Electronic circuits are more tolerant of excess voltage than they are of excess current. It is what it is. The main reason is that heat originates mostly from current, not voltage. It is a sag in voltage that is more likely to damage equipment. That is what I said. I'm not an electrical engineer but I don't think this is a questionable fact.
I also said that I don't think that 153 volts would be enough to destroy circuit boards but I didn't know for sure. I think 200 volts might do the trick. I simply don't know. Feel free to answer the question.
I also said that many generators generate square wave AC. Mine does. If his does he should consider turning off all delicate electronics while it is running. I stand by what I said in each case. Thanks for the response.
Right- higher voltage makes things brighter, extreme current makes them smoke.
Many motors and lights don't care about the waveform but with the increasing complexity of motor and lighting controllers, I would make sure they're OK with square wave. What generator are you using?
You need to look at the components in the circuits, not the circuits. Whether the circuit will perform as designed outside of the preferred voltage range is immaterial if the parts explode. Capacitors have a Working Voltage rating but many other components will handle higher voltage, depending on what type of component it is and its intended purpose.
I mentioned my old guitar amp- with the solid state rectifier I had used, the power tube plate voltage was close to 525VDC, which is more than 20% higher than what the schematic shows. Since it has 600WVDC filter caps, none of them popped, but if they were rated at 400WVDC, it would have been a different story. When I saw 525DVC, I decided that I would go back to using a tube rectifier- I tried a couple of different ones (some 'drop'; the DC voltage and this can be used for design purposes) and found one that delivers the voltage seen on the schematic, which was made at a time when 117VAC was the typically stated line voltage in the US. The line voltage is multiplied in the power transformer and sent to the rectifier- the circuit needs to be in an acceptable range, but tubes operate at much higher voltage than most solid state AV circuits and even if something is operating at extremely high voltage, newer equipment has voltage regulators that should be OK with some surges but it's the extremely fast transients that can cause problems, especially for microprocessors.
