whats with all this volt drop crap?

[Des 56]

My top floor lights flicker whenever I start the vacuum cleaner up, should I be worried?

I sympathise, it sucks

 

[Engineer54]

Why not boost volt drop ,by warming cable with more warm cables/heating pipes ?

Good idea, run all circuits in parallel configuration!! Apparently, these produce far more heating effect than single cable circuits!! lol!! ....:laugh3:

 

[Darkwood]

There's an article on the TLC website showing how equipment designed for 230v which is actually running at 240v (still the norm) uses 6% more energy and has a much shorter lifespan than if it were to run at 230v.
So, if the Government is so keen to have us all reduce our energy consumption, why not force generators to adopt the 230v standard? 6% reduction instantly

Volts drop is proressive along the customer supply chain if you got the furthest house at 230v spot on then the nearest house would be higher..... its alos effected by loading on other customers so in reality unless you individually supply every house and give it its own tapping of the transformer its going to be a hard task to achieve.... hence the 10% buffer zone.

I had an electronics factory low on one phase think it was 210v the grey phase .... this caused untold amounts of issues from the simple coffee machine shutting down randomly to issues with the delicate electronics.... i fitted as a temp a auto-voltage stabiliser but due to the nature of the testing of the circuit boards it was common to get several bad boards and fault currents which dont bode well with the voltage stabiliser as it welded the dancing arm to one end as it shot one way to compensate for the volts drop in S/C situe and then was subject to 1k+ amps....

Eventually after a meeting i had with dno they agreed to address the problem even though they were not bound to by regulation i believe they said we were the last building on the radial line and the phase in question was heavy loaded by other customers too.

Volts drop can be a nightmare to the operation of equipment and even if you dont realise it it can limit the life of electronics substancially ..... it was there 4th coffee machine and the suppliers were scratching there heads... they even tried to put in a claim to the company once they found out the cause until i reminded them the voltage was within required levels and its up to them to design their machine to adapt to the 10% tolerances of the UK supply.

 

[telectrix]

they can't even design a coffee machine to give you more than a few grains of sugar, so how can they cope with something more technical?

 

[ackbarthestar]

I sympathise, it sucks

The old cylindrical sausages had an arrow on each end. so you had to be careful otherwise you could end up with a blow job

 

[Rockingit]

What has always amused me is the way that we have to calculate VD from the nominal, not the actual. So on a building next door to the nearest sub and getting comfortably the other side of 245V delivered, we still have to work to 6.9V for lighting circuits and way oversized cables to cope with that, whereas in reality even after having dropped our maximum allowance we're still massively above the nominal to start with!

 

[ackbarthestar]

I usually follow my guidelines for current conditions and not nominal ones since if you're getting a consistent above nominal voltage in an installation then, as stated by Rockingit, design for the installation not the OSG.

 

[Darkwood]

The issue here is as the dno slowly upgrade the ageing network they aim to maintain the new tabulated voltages instead so if you work out VD on an actual value and then several yrs down the line the supply is upgraded you could be looking at possible hazards but if you design to 400v and 230v you are future proofing your calcs, in the worst case senerio a fire risk may be created.

 

[Knobhead]

The DNO’s are still working to the spec I posted earlier. It’s not in their interest to lower the voltage given the age of most of the infrastructure.

To have different system voltages isn’t a good situation. I’ve paralleled two transformers with a voltage difference using a U/G link box. Fun but not recommended.

 

[Rockingit]

Around here, most of the incoming DNO cable to main intake seems to have been made by the nearest nesting sparrow, so logic would suggest if it gets lowered 'properly' the sheer amount of work to upgrade from origin to installation would just be enormous, and hugely wasteful.

 

[Guitarist]

Volts drop is proressive along the customer supply chain if you got the furthest house at 230v spot on then the nearest house would be higher..... .

I've worked on many houses over the years in the most remote, and the most built up locations, and I don't think I've ever found one to be below 240v. In fact, most are in the region of 245v.

With the greatest respect to you dark, if you work in the industrial/commercial sector then the domestic scene would make your hair curl (as it did mine when I left industry)

 

[Knobhead]

Industry has always stuck to the higher end of the voltage range. I’ve worked on 550V and 660V systems. Uses a lot less copper for the same amount of work done.

PS you don’t use phase to neutral! Beyond the intake switchgear neutral isn’t required so not run.