Ground voltage!!

This thread is excellent at demonstrting how clueless this forum is about electricity. It will be hard for the OP to figure out what to do based on the various answers here.

It appears you have properly measured 80 volts ground to neutral.

It appears you have properly measured 80 volts ground to neutral.

No it doesn’t!

I don’t know about all multimeters, definitely don’t know about yours, but from the three that I own when the meters are first turned on and set to measure AC volts all three default to auto range...

The 80 volts he thinks he is reading could actually be 80 mV, (0.08 volt)...

It can’t get any simpler than my post above.

Responses here suggest sticking probes in outlets. DON’T.

From what you write here and your obvious confusion, I really don’t think you should be playing around with electricity.

Then I guess he shouldn’t even be inserting a plug into an outlet. He might get shocked!🙄

Once again, an article that asks the WRONG question. It should have read, "How do I measure my wall receptacle and make sense of what I am seeing. Instead he makes a nonsensical assumption based on ignorance. Sorry if that stings a little but it is true.

As stated above only one of those holes in your socket is live and when tested against any of the other two it should read (in the USA) 110v or close to that. If your situation was actually speaking of 80 VOLTS then yo are running a severe UNDERVOLTAGE and this can be quite harmful to a lot of your devices especially motors in your Refer and AC units. Under voltage can actually be MORE harmful than overvoltage. CALL you Utility provider and have them test you supply. if that is satisfactory, then you must immediately find out WHAT in you home is causing this drain. It should NEVER get below 100V and even at that it should not sustain that for any length of time.

If you do really read 80V between neutral and ground, this indicates a problem, suggesting that neutral and ground are not tied together as they should be. Most everyone has said that in one way or the other. Mea culpa for misidentifying the long slot in a 3 prong receptacle, but I did indicate my own uncertainty and did suggest to engage an electrician. I’m betting this is all a red herring anyway.

Here, get this and see what it tells you.  AFAIK it is the cheapest 3 prong tester which has built-in neutral to ground (N-E) voltage measurements: