BBC promoting snake oil

I am little surprised and also more than a little disappointed in all you
fucking experts. Nobody so far has mentioned the fact that the 240V of
which you all speak so glibbly is in fact a nominal target figure and only
available at the nearest transformer (or substation, not sure which)
which may be hundreds of yards away from where you need to use it and as
low as 210V (istr this being the lowest figure considered acceptable by
electric suppliers) when it gets to your sockets. Add a 10% drop down
energy saving snake oil transformer to this and your 240v supply suddenly
becomes less than 190V.

 

Well, the UK is nominally no longer 240 V anyway, n'est-ce pas? To
harmonise with Europe, both were declared at 230 VAC but with enough
tolerance to include 240 VAC: "Voltage tolerance of 230 V +10%/6% (216.2 V
to 253 V), widened to 230 V 10% (207 V to 253 V) in 2008. The system
supply voltage remains centred on 240 V" (guess where...).

And I kept wondering why it took you guys so long to realise that
there are losses in the transformer -- have none of you ever felt how hot
a transformer can get under rated loads?

--
Ivan Reid, School of Engineering & Design, _____________ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. Ivan.Reid@[brunel.ac.uk|cern.ch] Room 40-1-B12, CERN
GSX600F, RG250WD "You Porsche. Me pass!" DoD #484 JKLO#003, 005
WP7# 3000 LC Unit #2368 (tinlc) UKMC#00009 BOTAFOT#16 UKRMMA#7 (Hon)
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".

 

ICBA to Google but I assumed that for whatever exhorbitant[1] price they
charge for it that it was actually some kind of regulator rather than
just a transformer. Also I'm guessing that it's only meant to be wired
into the lighting circuit as it looked rather too small to be able to
handle the whole house load.

[1] assuming > £0

 

Again I am not terribly sure of the details but I believe the voltage
delivered is not an instantanious number but one of those sets of data
collected over time things, to account for temporary reductions in the
mains supply at times of high demand, like when all the bogs in the land
are flushed at half time during the cup final and loads of power gets used
by the water suppliers.

The final nail in the coffin of piss poor reporting and laughing at the
idiots who believe it is something we will be coming to later.

 

T'internet actually. T'was a quote from Wikipedia.

--
Ivan Reid, School of Engineering & Design, _____________ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. Ivan.Reid@[brunel.ac.uk|cern.ch] Room 40-1-B12, CERN
GSX600F, RG250WD "You Porsche. Me pass!" DoD #484 JKLO#003, 005
WP7# 3000 LC Unit #2368 (tinlc) UKMC#00009 BOTAFOT#16 UKRMMA#7 (Hon)
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".

 

Have you tried measuring your mains voltage?
Obviously not, or you wouldn't spout such bollocks.
Most houses get ~240v, a man's voltage, not your pathetic girly
continental 220v.

 

steve auvache formulated on Saturday :

I have never come across anywhere were the voltage is as low as that.
Generally I see 235 to 245. Lower than 230 would be a reasonable cause
for a complaint to go in.

 

At the end of a half mile of 230V overhead line, I saw 190V at the
sockets. Turned out an insulator was partially cuntducting on one of the
poles.

 

Eiron escribió:

Mine's a good 230 since they added another transformer to the village. I
have seen it drop to 180. The UPSs get a bit stroppy then.

 

Well for a start most transformers are a long way short of 100% efficient,
so any gains you might make by running your lightbulbs slightly dimmer will
probably be more than offset by the transformer losses. Then devices like
kettles will actually use more energy, because they'll take longer to boil
and hence lose more heat to the atmosphere in the process. Then the
remaining devices like computers and TVs are probably designed to cope with
voltage fluctuations and hence will just draw more current at the lower
voltage, and hence use the same number of kilowatt hours.

You don't see the US being twice as energy efficient because they run at
110V, do you?

 

Utter Drivel.

It's an inverse thing innit? Aren't they twice as inefficient?

 

Which part and why?

 

Ah. Fair cop.

 

No - it's about energy use, not voltage. Voltage does NOT define
power. You run 10 Volts at 240 amps and it is the same as running 240
Volts at 10 amps. There are certainly some efficiency differences but
they are miniscule. The US 110 Volt is just as efficient. OK, minus
maybe a poofteenth of a percent. The drop from 240 to 220 is going to
make fuckall difference and is just marketing bullshit.

Turn one light off for a minute a day would make more difference.

 

Routers.

Highly technical people have got to come up with ways of making the
interweb speeds at maximum when you turn it on not when it has been on for
a month to encourage people to turn them off.

 

Well, except that lighting is a very small part of your daily energy
usage. Walk around your house. Count up the number of 60 watt bulbs
that are burning. Then look at the demand for the fridge, the telly,
etc.

 

0.

There's two 18W energy savers currently on mind, one in the kitchen
and one in the living room.

450W for the entire house according to the widget attached to the
meter. So lighting is about a tenth of it.