Mains power voltage drop to reduce usage?...

[server]

On Sun, 06 Nov 2022 22:30:36 GMT, Cindy Hamilton
<hamilton@invalid.com> wrote:

On 2022-11-06, Ralph Mowery <rmowery42@charter.net> wrote:
In article <op.1u73hbz8mvhs6z@ryzen.home>, CK1@nospam.com says...

Not necessarily. We have a \"guaranteed\" minimum and maximum supply
voltage. Why should a company spend extra designing and installing
protection against supplies (not temporary aberrations) outside them?

Because other things could cause lower voltage, like a wiring fault in the device or the building. Especially in dual voltage countries like the US where you can lose one live.




If the neutral line is lost or a bad connection the line voltage in a
house could have one side to be very low and the other side very high in
the US system.

Funny you should mention that. Our neutral broke in high winds
yesterday. Both remaining legs seem to be well balanced.

Was this in the US with \"pigs\" in the poles ?

To my understanding the medium voltage feed is three phase open wire
in delta configuration (no neutral). The \"pig\" is a single phase
transformer with the primary connected between two phase wires in the
medium voltage feed. The third phase wire is not used by this
transformer, but most likely in the next pig. The secondary is center
tapped with 2 x 120 V. The cent re tap is connected to neutral and
ground.

Are you sure that the wire between pig secondary CT to your house
neutral was broken ?

Your description sounds more like a phase wire of the open wire medium
voltage feed was broken. If your pig did not use this phase, you
would not observe anything strange on your low voltage side, you would
have well balanced 2 x 120 V.

Note that the third wire on the medium voltage side is not neutral,
but the third phase connector.

 

[Wim Ton]

On Sunday, 6 November 2022 at 22:02:40 UTC, Commander Kinsey wrote:

On Sun, 06 Nov 2022 21:47:12 -0000, ke...@kjwdesigns.com <ke...@kjwdesigns.com> wrote:

On Sunday, 6 November 2022 at 12:23:11 UTC-8, Mark Lloyd wrote:
...

The other answers disagree, some loads would reduce, resistive heating
for example (including washing machine heaters).

The heaters are often temperature controlled, and will run longer to
make up for the reduced power.

...

The frequency of the grid can be changed dynamically to control the loads that have appropriate controllers.

This is used to some extent in the UK to control the demand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_demand_(electric_power)

A similar technique is used in California to control both generation (such as residential solar) and loads to avoid system instability. The frequency changes are only on the order of 1-2Hz away from nominal so it isn\'t enough to trouble most loads.

PG&E were offering residential customers a one time payment to allow the installation of a module that would disable air conditioning at times of peak stress. Large customers also can do this on a bigger scale.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_frequency#Frequency_and_load
I thought this was done by radio? That\'s how my neighbour\'s heating was controlled.

In Europe, LW radio is (was?) used @ 129.1 kHz, 135.6 kHz, and 139 kHz.
Wim

 

[Wim Ton]

On Sunday, 6 November 2022 at 22:10:41 UTC, Commander Kinsey wrote:

On Sun, 06 Nov 2022 22:07:51 -0000, danny burstein <dan...@panix.com> wrote:

In <op.1u8ec...@ryzen.home> \"Commander Kinsey\" <C...@nospam.com> writes:

[snip]

I wasn\'t aware Spain was communist.

Do you really want a meter which can overread by a factor of 5, in parti=
cular on eco-stuff like LED lights!

Do your teachers, especially physics, math, and social studies,
know how dumb you\'re sounding these days?
I\'m 47. And the 5 factor is a fact.

Electronic meters (of which smart meters are a subset) can react strangly on distorted currents, depending on the sensor (shunt resistor, Hall, Rogowsky coil). See the research from the Technical University Twenthe. All within the borders of the laws governing measurements for billing.
Wim

 

[Martin Brown]

On 07/11/2022 13:12, hubops@ccanoemail.com wrote:

On Mon, 7 Nov 2022 08:50:37 +0000, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:



This happens in rural locations when one phase out of two supplying a
village goes down and the remaining live phase is left taking the strain.

TWO?!

Yes! In rural UK the main distribution is full three phase on the main
lines but small villages are typically on spurs with just two live taps
and earth. Farmers have been quoted insane prices to be put on 3 phase.


Are you sure it isn\'t 1 primary phase ? plus neutral -
which feeds center-tapped transformers that provide
2 hots + neutral to the customer.
that is the North American way
.. which would save many millions of miles of primary conductor
and insulators ... compared to 2 primary lines.
John T.

Yes. UK HT distribution is all lines are hot and three of them. Neutral
is derived as the centre tap at the step down transformer.

Very large villages do have a full sub station and all three phases
present but I only discovered comparatively recently that my village has
just two out of the three phases. This arose out of walking the cable
routes when we had an MFU with no power for days (thanks to Northern
Powergrid\'s inadequate maintenance and storm Arwen).

In rough terms where I am there are two full 3 phase spines carrying
mains at 33kV running north south and the spurs come off that.

There is a slight difference in appearance of most poles. Convention
here is horizontal mounted is HT and vertical mounted consumer mains.

3 phase ._i_. where dots are cables

2 phase .__. you have to be quite close to see the difference.

It is also confirmed by the fact that if a single phase goes down we
some some very strange voltages.

If it was one driven phase and neutral then it would be all or nothing.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Cindy Hamilton]

On 2022-11-07, upsidedown@downunder.com <upsidedown@downunder.com> wrote:

Funny you should mention that. Our neutral broke in high winds
yesterday. Both remaining legs seem to be well balanced.

Was this in the US with \"pigs\" in the poles ?

It\'s in the U.S.

To my understanding the medium voltage feed is three phase open wire
in delta configuration (no neutral). The \"pig\" is a single phase
transformer with the primary connected between two phase wires in the
medium voltage feed. The third phase wire is not used by this
transformer, but most likely in the next pig. The secondary is center
tapped with 2 x 120 V. The cent re tap is connected to neutral and
ground.

Are you sure that the wire between pig secondary CT to your house
neutral was broken ?

I could see both ends of the break. The entire bundle of wires
is one of these:

https://www.prioritywire.com/specs/Triplex%20Service%20Drop.pdf

The uninsulated \"messenger\" line was broken. The power company
came by yesterday evening and repaired the break.

--
Cindy Hamilton

 

[Scott Lurndal]

upsidedown@downunder.com writes:

On Sun, 06 Nov 2022 22:30:36 GMT, Cindy Hamilton
hamilton@invalid.com> wrote:

On 2022-11-06, Ralph Mowery <rmowery42@charter.net> wrote:
In article <op.1u73hbz8mvhs6z@ryzen.home>, CK1@nospam.com says...

Not necessarily. We have a \"guaranteed\" minimum and maximum supply
voltage. Why should a company spend extra designing and installing
protection against supplies (not temporary aberrations) outside them?

Because other things could cause lower voltage, like a wiring fault in the device or the building. Especially in dual voltage countries like the US where you can lose one live.




If the neutral line is lost or a bad connection the line voltage in a
house could have one side to be very low and the other side very high in
the US system.

Funny you should mention that. Our neutral broke in high winds
yesterday. Both remaining legs seem to be well balanced.

Was this in the US with \"pigs\" in the poles ?

To my understanding the medium voltage feed is three phase open wire
in delta configuration (no neutral). The \"pig\" is a single phase
transformer with the primary connected between two phase wires in the
medium voltage feed. The third phase wire is not used by this
transformer, but most likely in the next pig. The secondary is center
tapped with 2 x 120 V. The cent re tap is connected to neutral and
ground.

Are you sure that the wire between pig secondary CT to your house
neutral was broken ?

Note that the neutral is also known as the \"Grounded Conductor\",
and it is tied to earth at the service entrance. This would explain
why the two 120VAC legs in the home would still look balanced as they\'ll
use the earth directly rather than indirectly through the grounded
conductor from the pig to the service entrance.

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 7 Nov 2022 12:02:29 +0000, Max Demian <max_demian@bigfoot.com>
wrote:

On 07/11/2022 11:27, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 7 Nov 2022 20:00:53 +1100, Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid
wrote:
On 07-Nov-22 8:47 am, David Wade wrote:
On 06/11/2022 20:55, Commander Kinsey wrote:

But the idea is to reduce peak load.  Spreading that out for longer is
exactly what they\'re after.

If the peak load reduction is needed over say an hour, then as it only
takes a few minutes to boil a kettle or heat up a washing machine it
will make no difference. You will simply have more kettles on at the
same time. In fact it could make the peak load higher.

Assuming it takes five minutes when the voltage is full, and folks put
their kettles on sequentially, you load is one kettle.

If it goes up to 6 minutes but we still want 12 kettles per hour then
you need to start the second kettle while the first is still boiling, so
the load goes up to two kettles for one minute...


It\'s worse than that. All the time that the kettle is heating, it\'s
losing heat to the environment. So reduce the voltage, and thus power,
and it takes more energy to boil a kettleful, since more is wasted in
the process.

Right. It\'s inefficient to take an hour to heat a kettle to boiling.

Mandatory staggering of tea times would help.

Do you really want Big Brother telling you when you can eat? I suppose
we could all eat in communal dining halls and drink Victory (ersatz) Coffee.

We don\'t have tea time in the USA, and we\'re un-manageable anyhow.

I\'m sipping Peet\'s French Roast now. They will have to pry that out of
my cold dead hands.

 

[John Larkin]

On Sun, 06 Nov 2022 22:30:36 GMT, Cindy Hamilton
<hamilton@invalid.com> wrote:

On 2022-11-06, Ralph Mowery <rmowery42@charter.net> wrote:
In article <op.1u73hbz8mvhs6z@ryzen.home>, CK1@nospam.com says...

Not necessarily. We have a \"guaranteed\" minimum and maximum supply
voltage. Why should a company spend extra designing and installing
protection against supplies (not temporary aberrations) outside them?

Because other things could cause lower voltage, like a wiring fault in the device or the building. Especially in dual voltage countries like the US where you can lose one live.




If the neutral line is lost or a bad connection the line voltage in a
house could have one side to be very low and the other side very high in
the US system.

Funny you should mention that. Our neutral broke in high winds
yesterday. Both remaining legs seem to be well balanced.

That happened to me once. We had 90 and 135 vrms on various outlets.
The PG&E guys didn\'t want to believe me but I finally convenced them
(some of the lights were BRIGHT) and they fixed a splice on the wires
outside.

That\'s weird because neutral here is usually multiply earth grounded
too.

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 07 Nov 2022 15:08:29 GMT, Cindy Hamilton
<hamilton@invalid.com> wrote:

On 2022-11-07, upsidedown@downunder.com <upsidedown@downunder.com> wrote:

Funny you should mention that. Our neutral broke in high winds
yesterday. Both remaining legs seem to be well balanced.

Was this in the US with \"pigs\" in the poles ?

It\'s in the U.S.

To my understanding the medium voltage feed is three phase open wire
in delta configuration (no neutral). The \"pig\" is a single phase
transformer with the primary connected between two phase wires in the
medium voltage feed. The third phase wire is not used by this
transformer, but most likely in the next pig. The secondary is center
tapped with 2 x 120 V. The cent re tap is connected to neutral and
ground.

Are you sure that the wire between pig secondary CT to your house
neutral was broken ?

I could see both ends of the break. The entire bundle of wires
is one of these:

https://www.prioritywire.com/specs/Triplex%20Service%20Drop.pdf

The uninsulated \"messenger\" line was broken. The power company
came by yesterday evening and repaired the break.

I\'m working on a photo album of hideous poles and wiring in San
Francisco. I\'ll post a link eventually.


https://www.dropbox.com/s/y2rru9af75rr4dw/P4.jpg?raw=1

https://www.dropbox.com/s/07v3z5hyg8zv4b1/20200812_181715.jpg?raw=1

 

[server]

On Mon, 07 Nov 2022 07:53:05 -0800, John Larkin
<jlarkin@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote:

I\'m working on a photo album of hideous poles and wiring in San
Francisco. I\'ll post a link eventually.


https://www.dropbox.com/s/y2rru9af75rr4dw/P4.jpg?raw=1

https://www.dropbox.com/s/07v3z5hyg8zv4b1/20200812_181715.jpg?raw=1

Telecom contractors get-away-with a lot ..
- power company - less so .
John T.

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 07 Nov 2022 11:05:36 -0500, hubops@ccanoemail.com wrote:

On Mon, 07 Nov 2022 07:53:05 -0800, John Larkin
jlarkin@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote:



I\'m working on a photo album of hideous poles and wiring in San
Francisco. I\'ll post a link eventually.


https://www.dropbox.com/s/y2rru9af75rr4dw/P4.jpg?raw=1

https://www.dropbox.com/s/07v3z5hyg8zv4b1/20200812_181715.jpg?raw=1



Telecom contractors get-away-with a lot ..
- power company - less so .
John T.

Yes. Comcast makes insane messes and doesn\'t care.

Can\'t wait for 6G or 8G or whatever, no wires.

 

[Cindy Hamilton]

On 2022-11-07, John Larkin <jlarkin@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote:

On Mon, 07 Nov 2022 15:08:29 GMT, Cindy Hamilton
hamilton@invalid.com> wrote:

On 2022-11-07, upsidedown@downunder.com <upsidedown@downunder.com> wrote:

Funny you should mention that. Our neutral broke in high winds
yesterday. Both remaining legs seem to be well balanced.

Was this in the US with \"pigs\" in the poles ?

It\'s in the U.S.

To my understanding the medium voltage feed is three phase open wire
in delta configuration (no neutral). The \"pig\" is a single phase
transformer with the primary connected between two phase wires in the
medium voltage feed. The third phase wire is not used by this
transformer, but most likely in the next pig. The secondary is center
tapped with 2 x 120 V. The cent re tap is connected to neutral and
ground.

Are you sure that the wire between pig secondary CT to your house
neutral was broken ?

I could see both ends of the break. The entire bundle of wires
is one of these:

https://www.prioritywire.com/specs/Triplex%20Service%20Drop.pdf

The uninsulated \"messenger\" line was broken. The power company
came by yesterday evening and repaired the break.

I\'m working on a photo album of hideous poles and wiring in San
Francisco. I\'ll post a link eventually.


https://www.dropbox.com/s/y2rru9af75rr4dw/P4.jpg?raw=1

https://www.dropbox.com/s/07v3z5hyg8zv4b1/20200812_181715.jpg?raw=1

Nice. I can see where a crowded city like SF would end up like that.
I live in an exurban \"neighborhood\" of 1- and 2-acre lots, carved
out from cornfields just after WWII.

--
Cindy Hamilton

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2022-11-07 14:43, Anthony William Sloman wrote:

On Monday, November 7, 2022 at 8:48:13 PM UTC+11, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-07 10:00, Sylvia Else wrote:
On 07-Nov-22 8:47 am, David Wade wrote:
On 06/11/2022 20:55, Commander Kinsey wrote:
On Sun, 06 Nov 2022 20:23:04 -0000, Mark Lloyd <not....@all.invalid> wrote:
On 11/6/22 09:06, Commander Kinsey wrote:

[snip]


The thing is, the rate of heat loss is proportional to the temperature. \\

Not always.

Heat loss by conduction is proportional to the temperature difference.

Heat loss by natural convection is proportional to the temperature difference squared, and the rate goes up quite a bit when the convection currents become turbulent

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_number

Heat loss by radiation rises as the fourth power of the absolute temperature of the radiator, which is even worse.

Ah, well, I did not mean proportional in the mathematically correct
sense


--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2022-11-07 16:08, Cindy Hamilton wrote:

On 2022-11-07, upsidedown@downunder.com <upsidedown@downunder.com> wrote:

Funny you should mention that. Our neutral broke in high winds
yesterday. Both remaining legs seem to be well balanced.

Was this in the US with \"pigs\" in the poles ?

It\'s in the U.S.

To my understanding the medium voltage feed is three phase open wire
in delta configuration (no neutral). The \"pig\" is a single phase
transformer with the primary connected between two phase wires in the
medium voltage feed. The third phase wire is not used by this
transformer, but most likely in the next pig. The secondary is center
tapped with 2 x 120 V. The cent re tap is connected to neutral and
ground.

Are you sure that the wire between pig secondary CT to your house
neutral was broken ?

I could see both ends of the break. The entire bundle of wires
is one of these:

https://www.prioritywire.com/specs/Triplex%20Service%20Drop.pdf

www.prioritywire.com uses an invalid security certificate.

The certificate is not trusted because it is self-signed.

Error code: MOZILLA_PKIX_ERROR_SELF_SIGNED_CERT


If I try http instead of https:



Connection denied by Geolocation Setting.

Reason: Blocked country:

The connection was denied because this country is blocked in the
Geolocation settings.

Please contact your administrator for assistance.
WatchGuard Technologies, Inc.

The uninsulated \"messenger\" line was broken. The power company
came by yesterday evening and repaired the break.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[Vir Campestris]

(top posted for Brian)

I\'ve got a bunch of devices intended for the US market which will run on
100-250 volts. The recent one I have which won\'t run on 100 is the TV.

Which won\'t work in the US anyway because the standards are different.

Andy

On 07/11/2022 09:03, Brian Gaff wrote:

If the switch mode supplies are designed with the right disidisipation, I
see no reason why anything from 110v ac 60 hz and 250v ac 50 hz not to be
possible. I\'m sure Samsung TVs can do this, or at least most of them can.

 

[Sam E]

[snip]

They don\'t use those for heaters, only motors.  Why would you need it
for a resistive heater?

I have it on my heat pump.

Heat pumps are not resistive!  That would defeat the whole purpose.

Heat pumps don\'t work well at very low temperatures. IIRC, the emergency
heat is normally resistive.

[snip]

 

[Jeroen Belleman]

On 2022-11-07 16:47, John Larkin wrote:

On Sun, 06 Nov 2022 22:30:36 GMT, Cindy Hamilton
hamilton@invalid.com> wrote:

On 2022-11-06, Ralph Mowery <rmowery42@charter.net> wrote:
In article <op.1u73hbz8mvhs6z@ryzen.home>, CK1@nospam.com says...

Not necessarily. We have a \"guaranteed\" minimum and maximum supply
voltage. Why should a company spend extra designing and installing
protection against supplies (not temporary aberrations) outside them?

Because other things could cause lower voltage, like a wiring fault in the device or the building. Especially in dual voltage countries like the US where you can lose one live.




If the neutral line is lost or a bad connection the line voltage in a
house could have one side to be very low and the other side very high in
the US system.

Funny you should mention that. Our neutral broke in high winds
yesterday. Both remaining legs seem to be well balanced.

That happened to me once. We had 90 and 135 vrms on various outlets.
The PG&E guys didn\'t want to believe me but I finally convenced them
(some of the lights were BRIGHT) and they fixed a splice on the wires
outside.
[...]

Me too! I have three-phase at home. I had a world of difficulty convincing
the supplier that his neutral was broken. I ended up with several low power
devices broken by overvoltage. No smoke, no fires, fortunately.

This seems to happen much more often than it should. In France, it\'s
common to have aluminium cabling between the power pole and the customer\'s
main breaker. Bad idea. A bad crimp turned out to be the cause.

Jeroen Belleman

 

[Peeler]

On Mon, 7 Nov 2022 12:07:51 -0600, Sam E, another mentally deficient,
troll-feeding, senile ASSHOLE, blathered:

Heat pumps don\'t work well at very low temperatures. IIRC, the emergency
heat is normally resistive.

Trolls work best when they regularly get fed by troll-feeding senile idiots
like you!

 

[The Natural Philosopher]

On 07/11/2022 18:04, Vir Campestris wrote:

(top posted for Brian)

I\'ve got a bunch of devices intended for the US market which will run on
100-250 volts. The recent one I have which won\'t run on 100 is the TV.

Which won\'t work in the US anyway because the standards are different.

Andy

On 07/11/2022 09:03, Brian Gaff wrote:
If the switch mode supplies are designed with the right
disidisipation, I
see no reason why anything from 110v ac 60 hz and 250v ac 50 hz not to be
possible. I\'m sure Samsung TVs can do this, or at least most of them can.

I wrote (some of the) firmware for a Gould advance digital
oscilloscope. That would work from 48V DC to 250V AC

--
“it should be clear by now to everyone that activist environmentalism
(or environmental activism) is becoming a general ideology about humans,
about their freedom, about the relationship between the individual and
the state, and about the manipulation of people under the guise of a
\'noble\' idea. It is not an honest pursuit of \'sustainable development,\'
a matter of elementary environmental protection, or a search for
rational mechanisms designed to achieve a healthy environment. Yet
things do occur that make you shake your head and remind yourself that
you live neither in Joseph Stalin’s Communist era, nor in the Orwellian
utopia of 1984.”

Vaclav Klaus

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 07 Nov 2022 20:24:54 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
<jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

On 2022-11-07 16:47, John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 06 Nov 2022 22:30:36 GMT, Cindy Hamilton
hamilton@invalid.com> wrote:

On 2022-11-06, Ralph Mowery <rmowery42@charter.net> wrote:
In article <op.1u73hbz8mvhs6z@ryzen.home>, CK1@nospam.com says...

Not necessarily. We have a \"guaranteed\" minimum and maximum supply
voltage. Why should a company spend extra designing and installing
protection against supplies (not temporary aberrations) outside them?

Because other things could cause lower voltage, like a wiring fault in the device or the building. Especially in dual voltage countries like the US where you can lose one live.




If the neutral line is lost or a bad connection the line voltage in a
house could have one side to be very low and the other side very high in
the US system.

Funny you should mention that. Our neutral broke in high winds
yesterday. Both remaining legs seem to be well balanced.

That happened to me once. We had 90 and 135 vrms on various outlets.
The PG&E guys didn\'t want to believe me but I finally convenced them
(some of the lights were BRIGHT) and they fixed a splice on the wires
outside.
[...]


Me too! I have three-phase at home. I had a world of difficulty convincing
the supplier that his neutral was broken. I ended up with several low power
devices broken by overvoltage. No smoke, no fires, fortunately.

This seems to happen much more often than it should. In France, it\'s
common to have aluminium cabling between the power pole and the customer\'s
main breaker. Bad idea. A bad crimp turned out to be the cause.

Jeroen Belleman

My case was an old Victorian built in 1892. The neutral was grounded
to an old gas pipe that was pretty rusted out, so maybe I didn\'t have
a local, redundant neutral connection.

Shocking that the whole thing didn\'t blow up. I eventually bought the
special tool to shut off the gas under the sidewalk and replaced the
gas entry pipes.

We have two phases 120-N-120 with, ideally, N connected to a good
ground at our breaker panel, and the neighborhood N grounded multiple
places. Our new house has a serious ground rod.

Does your system have a local N-G connection? That should prevent the
imbalance.