Just fitted my first ever voltage optimiser.
Not much to it but I am puzzled.
I tapped of the 10% drop terminals. The incoming supply to the optimiser is 251V and the outgoing load is 236V.
So where does the 10% come into this?
Which make and model?
For a pure resistive load, the "power saving" will be the ratio of the squares of the voltages, so it is fairly close to 10% for those voltages.
Whether enough of the load is resistive and not constant power (switch-mode) or thermostat controlled for this device to be useful is another matter.
John
I'm not sure exactly what you are doing here? Brian
And bear in mind that the larger resistive loads may be things like heaters, where there's no saving through reducing the power. The user just has to wait longer for them to heat up.
Not quite snake oil, but probably vastly over-hyped.
I think that is what happened here, someone who knows little heard thata 10% saving could be made on electricity so opted for this type of thing and perhaps that's why we only get 210-220V suppy.
Brian Gaff explained :
It is one of those silly scam gadgets, which claims to save on your electricity bill. They reduce the voltage by 10% and claim it will save you 10% on your bill, which is absolute balony. Heating loads will just take that 10% longer, motors produce less power output, incandescent lights will be much less than 10% dimmer, LED's and CFL's will simply draw more current, to produce the same amount of light, or more lights will be needed to make up for the darkness.
The unit itself, will also waste some power in heat produced.
I think fridge motors might operate at the lower voltage and draw less power. But, I'd want a separate circuit for the kettle that has +10% voltage on it.
But you forget the most important things, those suggesting such things and carrying them through get the adulation from all those that think money has been spent rather than wasted and it loks good on paper and anywhere else the real world doesn't get factored in. :)
It happens that GB formulated :
Yes, but then they would have to run for longer. At best, no advantage at all.
Hence do less cooling per unit time and run for longer until the thermostat kicks out again?
and so wear out more quickly?
Owain
Debatable - hard work for shorter time v.s. light work for longer time?
I think most fridges already do something of this sort. I doubt there will be any overall saving.
Quite.
I suspect these devices are sold in the same manner as "fuelsavers" that were marketed some time ago. They used to introduce a delay between thermostat calling for heat and the burner starting. The boiler water cooled a bit more which resulted in the burner having to run longer. Actual savings were in the mind of the purchaser.
Was it made by Russ Andrews ?
Been on here before:
?
Note second message in the thread!
the EMH100.
Yes, they were pretty much discredited when one of the manufacturers tried to get them made mandatory in homes.
Fridge motors are already operating with barely enough torque to start them. Reducing the voltage runs the risk of burning them out with a locked rotor current. (They do have protection against this, but eventually your luck may run out.)
More intelligent compressor controllers reduce the power once started, but I'm not sure how widespread they are in domestic fridges yet. At one point, there were plug-in modules which did this for fridge/freezers, but I haven't seen them for years now, which may mean they were worse than just a bad idea.
The VPhase I believe regulated the voltage to 220V. The one I fitted today has no such mechanism. It basically is a tapped transformer that gives 6, 8 or 10% voltage (or claims to) voltage drop.
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