This might help you, look up voltage optimisation device (google) or voltage optimiser, basically, they regulate the incoming voltage to 220v. …
Thanks Earthstore. I looked up the ‘V-Phase’ unit.
But their web site states a lot of woo and I’m unconvinced. Is it trying to break the laws of physics? (In my experience, a rarely successful enterprise
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Surely if the voltage is dropped, the current increases? Or if not, the time taken to ‘do work’ increases. For example it takes a certain amount of energy to raise a litre of water in your kettle from room temp to boiling, whether the energy is supplied at 240V, 220V, 9V or by a bunch of candles.
Their site cites an example of a washing machine using less electricity at 220V rather than 240V. But these things are thermostatic. Surely it would take a little longer to complete the cycle?
I’m puzzled. Unless it’s a legal way of fiddling the DNO’s meter, which maybe runs slower at lower voltage (I know nothing of metering technology), but even then, it would run for longer as your kettle heated up. I just don’t get it.
Getting back on topic, I doubt it would be possible to ‘back feed’ PV via this device. And it looks like it is not connected to the incomer, but only to an individual final circuit, or circuits. The instruction video is strangely silent on the details.
Also, I am sure you are aware you will need to get DNO approval if you go over 16amp (3.68KW is G83, basically fit system then tell the DNO what is installed) over this is G59,which means you have to get permission first.
Yes, thanks. Due to private advice from a very helpful member of this forum yesterday, who I have now engaged as a consultant, I amended my notifiable 10kW commercial proposal to TWO non-notifiable 4kW installations; one per phase. I had no idea that you could just present the DNO with MULTIPLE 16A PV supplies on polyphase installations. It’s bloody marvellous. And also means it will easily be done and dusted by 3 March.
And no talking to the bureaucratic DNO: Yippee!
I’d better leave this addictive medium now and get the JCB out. I have a trench to dig!
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WHAT A GREAT FORUM: My amateur research here and elsewhere has stopped me making a major design and installation error, also missed by some professionals, which might have meant re-trenching, and scrapping wrongly-specified SWA.
Here’s something I learned which might help others: if installing PV on a rural site with higher than normal mains voltage, and the array is a long way from the incomer, THINK CAREFULLY: it may be best to run MV DC back to the incomer area on thinner armoured cable; do not put the inverters near to the array at the end of a long AC line, unless you use very high CSA AC cables, with all the attendant expense to avoid volt drop. Otherwise the inverter may drop out due to overvoltage on sunny days when the unit ramps up its own voltage to try to overcome an unusually high mains supply and shove it down thin copper all the way back to the incomer. Many people have had this problem worldwide.
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