Wait eight seconds longer for your kettle – and c ut your carbon bill

Am I going mad or is this total bollocks. Reducing the domestic line voltage will do bugger all, infact I think it will actually increase power consumption. A litre of water still takes around 100Wh to boil from cold, and if you reduce the voltage it will take longer to heat and increase thermal losses. Most modern electronic devices can cope with a wide mains input voltage range by using switching PSUs on the input side - then as you lower the mains voltage the mains input current will rise - causing more losses in the distribution system.

The suggestion in the article that it will *increase* transmission capacity seems a little inexplicable, since this current limited AFAICS.

(I'm a bit surprised

It's not about kettle economy: there are a few things that will use less electricity, like lights which will be imperceptibly dimmer. Similarly for a few heating appliances such as a 2kW fan heater. People might not notice that the room is slightly cooler. Anything that uses a thermostat or SMPS won't be affected - the former will be on for longer and the latter will draw more current: also things that have to do a specific heating job, like boiling a kettle or heating a saucepan will need to be on for longer.

The car analogy is false as at lower speeds wind and tyre resistance will be less.

I doubt that a £60 per year is achievable.

I cannot imagine dropping the voltage for an LED light by 10% would save any meaningful amount of electricity. Would it not try to compensate anyway?

With the odd exceptions there will be no saving in electricity then? How much power does the voltage reducing device consume?

"We can?t connect to the server at btjunkie.org."

If its a design with a SMPSU, then it will compensate by drawing power for a longer portion of the mains cycle (they typically only draw current at the peaks of the waveform).

Ones that just have a simple capacitive dropper feeding a long chain of series LEDs might run a bit dimmer...

You're right. Firefox shows that but not IE.

Which, ironically, will increase local supply copper losses.

They might also last quite a bit longer too.

I would assume that Electricity North West know what is going on, at least the engineers would, marketing department scam or what?

Yes that would not work very well, Remember the 3 day week during the minors strike? Our volts sometimes dropped to 210 and the cycles were none too stable either and after it was all over some sub stations had to be serviced due to overheating. It surely makes sense as you need to draw more current to get the same power. Brian

But that is not a real saving its merely manipulating statistics. Brian

So just a few people more than otherwise (those on the cusp) would fit higher wattage bulbs.

So just a few people more than otherwise (those on the cusp) would turn the heating up.

Bill

That includes most fan heaters then...

Tim

kettles will consume a little more energy per boil, taking longer means more heat lost.

the difference in light output is major. It won't be a few people.

no, it'll just run for longer. There is no saving in either case.

NT

ISTM there are (as so often with such reports) 2 broad possibilities:

a. the engineers at Electricity North West (ENW) have forgotten the laws of physics or

b. The Guardian (or others in the chain) have garbled the message.

You can judge for yourself from all the material ENW have made available at

There are reports that you can read. The reality may be somewhat different to what a journalists understands. The cost saving appears to be for the electrical generating and distribution industry by manipulating supply more efficiently at peak times rather for than saving £60 per household bill. The cost saving relies on less future generating capability to cope with peak demand.

Summary

They've done trials with real customers apparently!

Might work with insulated kettles, I suppose.