I was sent details of this plug which (apparently) steps down the household voltage from circa 240V (in EU) to 220V. I understand the concepts of stepping down voltage, but with a simple plug-in device? Is that possible or is this junk science.
Their link is
Pure con. The website is very amateurish too!
You can pinch very small amounts of free electricity past a meter by a suitable capacitor to phase shift voltage and current. It becomes hopelessly difficult to do at high currents though.
You cannot have something for nothing in the way that they imply.
+1
Reading the 'comments' it wasn't obvious why anyone would want to buy five of the things, when the web site implies that one does the job. Several of the comments had a certain sameness about them, as if all written by one person, i.e. the seller!
Complete and utter techno bollocks.
Con.
The domain was registered last month. The web site was written by someone unable to write English or proofread!
The gains sound implausibly high even for the few cases where a voltage reduction may lower energy consumption.
The device has no feasible mechanism to reduce the appliance supply voltage anyway since it is not inline with the supply to any them.
Chances are, if you open it up, it has a diode, a capacitor and an LED and that is it!
Tapped autotransformer. Would work with low current devices. Most tvs had such a beast built in in the 1970s, you just moved a little jumper plug. Brian
Oh its one of those is it, well yes the old ones are the best. The question seemed to be saying how can I run a 220 device from 240, most will tolerate that but I used to have a little psu for a tv that eventually welded itself to a coffee table through trying to reduces the voltage. Brian
Utter bollocks. They cant even write in English
The voltage used throughout Europe (including the UK) has been harmonised since January 2003 at a nominal 230v 50 Hz. That is only the nominal voltage and it has a tolerance (230 volts -6%, +10%).
UK mains voltage cab be 216 volts to 253.0 volts.
Shouldn't the statement "95% of user who have tried ElectroPro have saved up to 52% off their bills a month" tell you it is a snake oil product?
ElectroBOOM says crap ...
It shows saving 50% on electric heating.
Since electric heating converts as near as dammit all the electricity into heat, the only way it could save you money is by reducing the heat output. So save your money and do that on the thermostat instead.
It shows a 35% saving on tungsten lighting. Run a tungsten bulb at a lower voltage and you will save money. But the bulb becomes even more inefficient. So more economical to fit a smaller bulb and run it at full voltage.
Of course not. It blew his fuses and so he had no electricity for a fortnight!
OR
Kal Ico wrote on 11/12/2020 :
Another con, the latest in a long history of such devices.
So it is most likely a diode in series with the mains then.
I expect some devices will react badly to that waveform. It extends the working life of filament lamps insider electric fires enormously.
Depends if efficiency is your main goal. MTBF is much longer if you under run a filament bulb and never turn it off.
It's often more snake oil than that - just a LED and resistor across the mains to indicate that something is working.
Yes - a suitable diode to take 3kW reliably would add to the cost.
Not to mention that it has no capability to actually connect a load to it in the first place.
It is a genuine long established Teflon coated con.
Do a search on Youtube for "Power saver" and you can be amused for hours.
20A diode continuously rated at 10W would do it for under £1 in bulk. The heat sink needed for it might cost a little more.
That is roughly how one of the common electric blanket designs works to do the lowest half power setting except at a much lower current <1A.
High 4V^2/R: R || R
Med V^2/R: R
Low: V^2/R/8:R+R + diode
Scam for sure. There are ways to trim power use, but not to the levels they claim, nor as easily, nor is it the same approach for every device, nor can it be done by just plugging something in somewhere, nor can it be done with all appliances.
NT
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