Oh dear, somebody doesn't seem to get it.....

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/230volt/

Use 8% less power by reducing the voltage to 230?
Why not reduce it to 12v and save 95%?

Why in the name of sanity have they included Tristan da Cunha in their list of expatriate territories?
It's uninhabited!

The logic of this has me intrigued and annoyed. It's one of these things invented by beaureaucrats who don't understand what they're on about, but gives them a warm fuzzy feeling inside.
For one thing, the theory may work at face value with a 230V supply and 240V appliances, but what happens further down the track when the old 240V appliances are out of service and there's only new 230V ones? Reduce the supply then to 220V?
Secondly, this theory only applies to certain loads, I don't see a switchmode power supply for example reducing its power consumption on reduced voltage.
Then we have the situation with some heating appliances, say an oven. To get to the same temperature that it did at 240V, the element will have to stay on for a longer period when the supply is 230V.
Thankfully, the politically correct powers haven't got this far in Australia and I'm happy to report the phase voltage still measures 240-250.
It's a sore point with me having once lived at the end of the line and only getting 180-220V. I had to plug the TV into a variac just for starters...

Aussie, some of them'll be getting the warm fuzzy feeling of a boot in their butts after recent fiascos, like losing the entire UK child agency database [ 24M people including their bank details ] in the mail or pouring us$80,000,000,000 into a dead-duck bank! Recent events show the whole shower to be incapable of running a bun fight in a cake shop!

I see two problems just right off the top. Electric motors will have to work harder thus more wear and tear on them and two, folks futhers away from the power supply like farms in rural areas, will have nothing but problems. Voltage is the worse at the end of the circuits anf farms with motors better start stockin up on replacements. This porposal was flown awile back and fissiled here in the US. Good luck

Then these "blind in one eye, can't see out the other" people will see that voltage drop as even more savings...

Ian A.

Most likely.

It was only uninhabited for a brief period after the volcano erupted in 1961. Many residents returned a couple of years later and there are over 200 people on the island today.

http://www.tristandc.com/



Which are clearly points that the originator of the petition doesn't understand. It seems to me that he's just worked out his 8% saving figure from the reduction in power when going from 240 to 230V across a constant resistance.



Just for anyone across the Pond not aware of the history behind this, the only reason that our supplies are now listed officially as 230V is because of European "harmonization." That's how -- as the petitioner outlines -- we ended up with the weird asymmetrical tolerance of 230V +10/-6%, because it allowed us to say "Hey look, we're on 230V now" without actually changing anything from our existing 240V +/-6% specification.

Typical from bureaucrats who understand nothing about electricity !!

If that happened most fridges will burn out because of stalling motors, also bigger machinery will be affected as large compressors require the correct voltage to avoid crawling of the motors at 1/7 of the speed and have an early burn out of the windings. ( V² / R ).
Heating appliances will take longer to do the same job and lightbulbs will be a little duller but will last longer.

Harmonisation is a joke anyway. What about all the different plugs and sockets ?

Nothing wrong with an appliance with a multitap transformer and a voltage caroussel to select the correct value and a SMPS has a wide range, usually from 170 - 270 Volts ac.

My $ 0.02 worth.

-It's one of these things invented by beaureaucrats who don't understand what they're on about, but gives them a warm fuzzy feeling inside.-

I feel better,I thought this unique to the USA.I guess they're all the same.

-he's just worked out his 8% saving figure-
Spend a dollar save a nickle, not uncommon.

Just like the new cables as well, one reason supposedly being so that manufacturers can sell them all across Europe. Except that U.K. style T&E (Romex-like) is little-used outside the U.K. & Ireland, regardless of the color code.



Or more. 90 to 260V or so isn't at all unusual now.

I do think the UK would be better off using 230V but not for power saving reasons. Because the UK's a relatively small market compared to the entire EU (or the entire former 220V market) the vast majority of appliances are designed to cope with 220-230V.

I've heard that there are issues with peak voltages in the UK pushing what are really 220V appliances beyond their designed upper limits e.g. increasingly electronic-laden domestic appliances like washing machines, dryers etc blowing when they're presented with a UK peak voltage...

It'd make sense purely to avoid all these minor problems..

In theory, the maximum voltage which should ever be present by statute is 254.4V (240V +6%). I've seen a supply very slightly over that a few times (maybe 256V), but it's very rare.

240V only became fully standard across the country in the early 1970s. Prior to that the nominal declared voltage varied from place to place.

Paul,

I've just come across a lot more fried equipment in the UK than I have in the Republic of Ireland.

E.g. newer domestic appliances that have a high degree of electronic control. Cookers, washers etc with lots of chips and even solid-state switching on board sometimes don't take well to higher voltages.

Typically if you connect a multimeter across a supply here you'll get between 220 and 228V. In rural areas in particular (long lines) you'll often get about 215-220V. It's not unheard of to have problems with voltage dips in some rural areas. E.g. I've heard of gas boilers failing to start and when the technician checked the supply voltage it was sitting at barely 190V !! This was a farm way out in the middle of nowhere. Once the poco was alerted to this they fixed the voltage issue.

The UK seems to have the other extreme in some urban areas though, where you're close to the transformer..

In some cases the utilities have had to cope with extra loading which has caused low voltages at the extremities of the LV lines during peak load hours, so they've altered the taps to compensate while still keeping within the upper tolerance limit.

It's not unusual for the line voltage to sit around 245V during low-load times in a lot of areas, and I've heard of places where 250V is more the normal no load voltage.

Where I am it's rare for the line to go above about 242 or 243V during quiet times, and it seldom ever drops below 230V even during peak hours (faults excepted).

I'm at an advanced stage burning waste veg-oil in a pressure-jet burner for C.H.. The latest model burners [Danfoss, Trianco, etc.] are now fitted with low / high voltage sensing and shut off if v is outside certain limits.
After an hour wading through reams of EEC directives, I'm no wiser as to what they actually are!!
A Directive is an oxymoron, if you can't find it!

Paul,
A few places around over here have had to be installed with Auto-tap changers, you get a dairy shed at the end of a spur-line and you have some issues with the gear used in them sheds (mostly PLC/computer controlled sensors) as well as a VF Drive on the actual rotary platform.
I was at a dairy shed last Friday (3am) that had burned out the VF Drive because of low voltage, it took the motor and the gearbox with it as well.
What makes it even worse, is a guy screaming at you down the phone that he has another 800 cows to milk and the platform won't turn!

Similar in Auckland, Mike.
A few new 11 kV regulators have been installed on long spur lines to keep the voltage within limits.

Also some 11 kV lines have been upgraded to 22 kV, with new insulators and transformers. At halfwaypoint a 22 / 11 kV transformer will feed the rest of the line, so not all equpment had to be replaced and reduce some costs.

CBD Auckland used to run on 6.6 kV. Has been upgraded to 22 kV now.

Also the new 22 kV switchgear is not much bigger at all, or the same in size as 11 kV gear.

Cheers, Raymond

Not only the plugs are different, but there are at least 5 different and completely incompatible mounting box standards in Europe alone!
Legrand sells 3 different kinds of boxes for the similar looking French, Belgian and German sockets! Italy uses rectangular boxes, Switzerland too but a different size, UK and IE use square... go figure.

Hm, I am from austria.
We switched from 220V to 230V a few years ago.
And my voltmeter says: 237-247 in the last days-
242V at the moment.

A harmonised voltage was pretty vital for economies of scale for manufacturers and in the long term in the UK's interest as it means that there will be more 'stuff' available that actually works reliably there i.e. the entire 230V market is available to them.

Harmonising the plugs would be a nice idea but it's unlikely to happen. I reckon one way of doing it would be to have rated connectors, a lot like the IEC connectors found on devices today that could be locked in with a tool. It would be impossible to fit the wrong one with the wrong rating due to keying and it would be safe as they'd be locked into position on many appliances. The countries with schuko look-a-likes that are dangerously compatable with CEE 7/7 plugs should simply move to CEE 7/7, but I can't see BS1363 and the Aussi plug going anywhere soon.

You'd reduce manufacturing costs and mess generally yet avoid having to change plugs in the UK, Australia, NZ, Ireland, Malta, Cyprus etc.

Can't really see why it can't be done.

The IEC connector and the German originated figure-of-eight (telefunken) connector have become the absolute standards for AV and computer equipment. I can't see why they can't be adapted to everything else too.

The three pin plug used in Australia is also used in New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Samoa and other countries throughout the South Pacific (East Timor also has some Australian outlets due to the rebuilding work done in 1999-2007 during peacekeeping work). No point in changing in what is essentially a good socket pattern in this part of the world with the ability to plug a 10 amp plug into a 10, 15 or 20 amp outlet with no problems.

The volume of equipment sold is here in this part of the world with the AS/NZS 3112 pattern plugs easily would outweigh the inconvenience of changing to a "world pattern" plug.

To change to a "world pattern" plug brings to light another problem: what size do you make the new outlets? Most outlets here are on 115x73 mm plates with 84mm mounting centres, some are 115x115 mm in older installations. British outlets are different sizes for singles or doubles so which outlet plate size would be the accepted version?

Servas Kollege!
Where in Austria are you located?
Here in the outskirts of Vienna I usually get 231-234 pretty much regardless of the time of the day, at School we usually had 217-219 even though the transformer was in the basement directly below. That's a bit weird, because for all I know the medium voltage side was raised by the PoCo, so all systems on private transformers should be 230V now too.

Undervoltage problems sound pretty familiar from holidays in Italy. Rural farms occasionally dipped down to something like 190V in 220/380V days... my dad's Sony tape recorder was first painfully slow and then refused to work at all. The Italians seem to love long 230/400V spurs...

Edit because I overlooked a page of posts...

I think Europe is mostly going to settle on CEE 7/7 anyway except for BS1363 countries. Danmark should already have done the switch, Italy has accepted Schuko as type P30 and is quite happily selling Schuko receptacles as well as combi devices, most imported appliances already have Schuko plugs.
Switzerland still clings to their own plugs, but might change too in the end.

I am in the 20th District near the Spittelau district heating plant.
I checked the voltage now: 242V in my living room at the Schuko.





Why not the IEC 60906-1?
All Advantages of all the different plugs in one System.

Large areas that have used the same plug since day one; eg. North America and the South Pacific shouldn't be disadvantaged by having some "world plug" foisted upon them when they are already using a proven system.
Just imagine all the adaptors required to use the "world plug" in existing GPO's. Seems to defeat the purpose really; it's not as if GPO's are replaced every couple of years.
One can envisage the situation where adaptors or change of plug are required to use new appliances on old GPO's and vice versa.
As for this idea of standardising on voltages just so the robots churning out all the Chinese junk don't have to make as many variants, the approvals for each country are still going to be different (unless we're going to standardise that too), hence different versions still need to be manufactured.
Realistically, a not insignifigant amount of 220V equipment has been sold and used in Australia for more years than anyone can remember and problems have been very few. It's rather amusing to see the 240V rating on so many fridges but with 220V stamped into the actual compressor units...just a formality really.
The idea of standardising plugs and voltages is really like digital television; create something new for beauracracy and big business to feed itself on despite no interest from consumers.

That's weird, because in the TGM (not that far away) we had a constant low. When we got 355V between phases it was a faulty meter though
My own measurements were carried out in the 18th, still in the more urban area inside the Vorortelinie.

Why not the infamous IEC plug? Because then every country would have to change. Cee 7/7 is already an established plug across most of Europe, so if a handful of countries decide to gradually switch to Schuko or French style receptacles the economic impact will be fairly low. If you try to get all European countries to switch to a completely new system there would be an uproar.

Besides I don't trust that system - it's pretty similar to the Swiss system and I've heard of frequent meltdowns even though the Swiss don't have sleeved pins.

NEMA 1-15, 5-15 and other plug patterns are most definitely not the safest design in international comparison - we already read stories of half-dislodged plugs almost causing electrocutions and similar incidents that couldn't have happened with sleeved pins. Furthermore, the prongs are fairly thin and subject to mechanical damage - in this respect the AS/NZ plug with similar sized blades seem to fare a lot better. So I guess we can find a number of reasons to replace the US plugs, but I don't think that's what we're talking about here - it would already be a vast achievement if all European countries peacefully settled on compatible plugs systems.

Aussie, I don't get what you mean by fabricating different devices for different approvals - if one given plug fulfills all national requirements, it can be sold in all countries! For example. Prior to the harmonization of approvals in the EU Schuko plugs carried about a dozen different listings and could be sold all over Europe.