Electricity North West says plans to lower its volta ge could cut emissions by 10% and save customers £60 a year

You are forgetting that there is heat loss from the kettle, the longer it is hot the bigger the loss. You can see this if you reduce the voltage enough it will never get to boiling as the kettle loses as much heat as it gains but below boiling point.

From what I remember, it would be much more than 10%. As the efficiency of a lamp goes down, a larger proportion of the energy is converted to heat. Reduce the voltage enough and all you would get from a lamp would be 100% heat.

:-))

mechanic explained :

You mean they have fudged trials showing savings?

The latter. And colour temperature may be important too.

I still have a Woolies 60 watt bulb in my bathroom that has been there since 1992. Marked 240V.

I used to have 243V here in Sussex but about 7 years ago it dropped to 220/225 and had stayed there ever since.

will electric cars take even longer to charge though ?.

There were two issues - back then films were slow and photoflood lights had to be as bright as possible and to mimic the colour temperature of sunlight they were heavily blue filtered and run very hard.

A nice plot of GLS filament bulb behaviour vs voltage is online here:

If you were doing wet colour photographic printing then you needed a voltage stabiliser if you wanted reproducible results. Otherwise the filter pack would drift during the evening as domestic load varied.

I am surprised no-one is blaming this on the EU and making it an issue in Brexit.

You can buy voltage optimisation equipment to reduce the voltage. Could similar equipment be deployed to restore under-voltage supply to its proper voltage?

I thought the three phase system might allow for this. One of the phases could be used for renewable electricity, one for fossil fuels and one for nuclear. You could then connect each property to the phase that matches its choice of supply.

dificult to sort thatbout through the various transformers used in the distribution.

It happens that Scott formulated :

Yes, that was a well known snake oil way to reduce your bill, by buying a gadget.

Yes, but as in the above snack oil solution, it would involve additional losses via the equipment, wasting energy and larger bills.

Actually t increases by 10%, because power is proportional to voltage squared.

How many people have filament bulbs any more though? I must admit that we have two - one in an outside light where the motion sensor can't switch LEDs or CFLs and one in the bathroom, because the PSU can't cope with all LEDs and starts pulsing on and off.

Both will be changed at some point.

By taking longer to boil, the kettle has more time to lose heat to the surroundings and so uses a little more - but very little.

Definitely.

Yes. The bulk of power, other than heating of some type (water, room, cooking, etc.) is probably used in TVs, set-top boxes, PCs, etc. - all with SMPSUs.

But very few filament bulbs left.

SteveW

Still 243V here the last time I looked (a couple of weeks ago).

SteveW

I make it 9.75% ... !

Showing a shade over 243v right now, here.

Alternatively you can buy magnetic electron traps to add to the green filters. They work in much the same way as those designed to eliminate limescale build-up in your water pipes.

The more expensive magnetic traps are more "green" in that they capture all the coal, gas and nuclear electrons from the incoming live wire and recycle them back to the power station in the neutral wire.