Author Topic: Mains voltage poll (UK)  (Read 9205 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline IanBTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11790
  • Country: us
Mains voltage poll (UK)
« on: November 21, 2017, 08:15:19 pm »
I often read about the European harmonization of mains voltage and I wonder if in reality it has changed anything. Could we do a quick poll around UK residents? If you have a (safe) DMM, could you make a quick measurement of your mains voltage and post the result below? Is it still generally 240 V, or has anything changed in recent years?
 

Offline Bashstreet

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 298
  • Country: gb
Re: Mains voltage poll (UK)
« Reply #1 on: November 21, 2017, 08:22:26 pm »
241.7
 

Offline BNElecEng

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 99
  • Country: gb
Re: Mains voltage poll (UK)
« Reply #2 on: November 21, 2017, 08:24:21 pm »
Measured this morning, 242V at the wall at home. 420V line to line at work.
 

Offline Bashstreet

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 298
  • Country: gb
Re: Mains voltage poll (UK)
« Reply #3 on: November 21, 2017, 08:32:28 pm »
I often read about the European harmonization of mains voltage and I wonder if in reality it has changed anything. Could we do a quick poll around UK residents? If you have a (safe) DMM, could you make a quick measurement of your mains voltage and post the result below? Is it still generally 240 V, or has anything changed in recent years?

To be accurate Britain takes part in the European mains voltage harmonization.
As In U.K voltage is to be 230 +-10% the old standard sits inside the tolerances.
I am not sure if any work has been done to upgrade old transformers to the new standard as they reach end of their service life.

It is process that might take decades if ever and is related to political will and needs rather than any other requirement.
 

Offline Avacee

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 299
  • Country: gb
Re: Mains voltage poll (UK)
« Reply #4 on: November 21, 2017, 08:32:49 pm »
For the OP:  243.7V @ 49.7Hz at 20:32 UK time in the North-west

UK National Grid data ... http://www2.nationalgrid.com/uk/industry-information/electricity-transmission-operational-data/
http://www2.nationalgrid.com/UK/Industry-information/Electricity-transmission-operational-data/Data-explorer/

There are a couple of sites that show such data which appear to refresh every 5th minute and I dare say some others will show historic voltage trends but my google-fu is weak tonight
http://gridwatch.co.uk/

Another site: http://nationalgrid.stephenmorley.org/

And  http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

Edit: Next time an enviromentalist tells me we should close all nuclear plants and build more solar I'm going to give them a link to the sites above and ask them how much solar has produced in the last week (the weather has been pretty shitty).

« Last Edit: November 21, 2017, 08:47:27 pm by Avacee »
 

Offline IanBTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11790
  • Country: us
Re: Mains voltage poll (UK)
« Reply #5 on: November 21, 2017, 08:42:33 pm »
Cool, it is still 240 V then. Apropos of nothing, I just measured 242.3 V @ 59.99 Hz here in California. Just a couple of volts off the nominal value.
 

Offline richard.cs

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1188
  • Country: gb
  • Electronics engineer from Southampton, UK.
    • Random stuff I've built (mostly non-electronic and fairly dated).
Re: Mains voltage poll (UK)
« Reply #6 on: November 21, 2017, 10:49:16 pm »
239.9 V here. Nothing has changed or is intended to change, except that at some point in the indeterminate future everyone is supposed to widen their asymmetric tolerances out to 230 V +/-10%.
 

Offline mariush

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 4983
  • Country: ro
  • .
Re: Mains voltage poll (UK)
« Reply #7 on: November 21, 2017, 11:24:28 pm »
Romania ... 1:22 am , 246v AC (using a kill-a-watt type device) 

Typical for this hour...

AFAIK it's 230v +10%, -6% ... so still within acceptable limits.
 

Offline IanBTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11790
  • Country: us
Re: Mains voltage poll (UK)
« Reply #8 on: November 22, 2017, 01:29:40 am »
Romania ... 1:22 am , 246v AC (using a kill-a-watt type device) 

Typical for this hour...

AFAIK it's 230v +10%, -6% ... so still within acceptable limits.

Do you know what your local voltage is supposed to be (nominal value)? Even though 246 V is within +10% of 230 V, I think voltage regulation at the point of distribution is usually better than that (see above for examples of voltage regulation in the UK). I suspect voltage regulation is better in the center of towns and cities, but may be worse in rural areas especially at the end of a long spur.
 

Offline Brumby

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 12288
  • Country: au
Re: Mains voltage poll (UK)
« Reply #9 on: November 22, 2017, 01:41:17 am »
Well, it's the middle of the day here in western Sydney and I just checked at a power point.  It varied between 233.7V and 236.1 V over a period of a minute.

Edit: There are a few things switched on here - so I expect the building voltage will have sagged slightly.  There were no obvious signs of anything being switched on or off in the building during my measurement - so I expect the fluctuations came from load variations in the area.

I know I've said this before - but I always get amused when people talk about mains standards.  Back in 2000, Australia went from a 240V standard to a 230V standard - but the amusing bit was the tolerances that were included....  240V +6%/-10% went to 230V +10%/-6%.  Do the math.

Somebody was an administrative genius. ;D
« Last Edit: November 22, 2017, 01:54:07 am by Brumby »
 
The following users thanked this post: Electro Detective

Offline IanBTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11790
  • Country: us
Re: Mains voltage poll (UK)
« Reply #10 on: November 22, 2017, 01:53:24 am »
Well, it's the middle of the day here in western Sydney and I just checked at a power point.  It varied between 233.7V and 236.1 V over a period of a minute.

Wow, that's some variation. Do you live in a third world country?  ;D
 

Offline Brumby

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 12288
  • Country: au
Re: Mains voltage poll (UK)
« Reply #11 on: November 22, 2017, 02:12:09 am »
Think I just found a dicky power point socket.

Tried another one and got 235.9V to 236.7V over a period of 3 minutes.
 

Offline Artlav

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 750
  • Country: mon
    • Orbital Designs
Re: Mains voltage poll (UK)
« Reply #12 on: November 22, 2017, 03:32:42 am »
Middle of the night here in Moscow (technically Europe too), the sockets show 225V, which is a bit above the nominal 220V we should have here. During the day i remember measuring about 215V.
Does not sound like our grid is getting harmonized to anything so far...
 

Offline HKJ

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2899
  • Country: dk
    • Tests
Re: Mains voltage poll (UK)
« Reply #13 on: November 22, 2017, 05:04:24 am »
We had 220VAC before the harmonization, now it is 230VAC in most places (Denmark).
I have 230V within a volt or two most of the time.
 

Offline Ampera

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2578
  • Country: us
    • Ampera's Forums
Re: Mains voltage poll (UK)
« Reply #14 on: November 22, 2017, 07:28:17 am »
It's a funny story in the US, at least from my perspective.

We are officially supposed to be 120VAC, 60hz, but depending on who you ask, some people will say the US is 115V, 110V. There are all tolerances, and these numbers are still within them, but all my meters (on a UPS for example) stay right around 120VAC.

It gets even crazier in Japan. They have 100VAC power at either 50 or 60hz depending on what half of the country you are on. They also use essentially the same NEMA standard the US does, just with a different name, and from what I can tell they have some plugs that look like they come from the 50s (small housing, thin wire), no meat to any of it). Grounding also seems to be a bit up in the air with some places having it, some places not, some places having ungrounded sockets with a grounding post on some socket? I don't live in Japan, so I can't confirm any of this to be a thing on a large scale, but I know it exists.

We have so many standards for all of this, but nobody can standardize the standards. We even have over 20 different organizations across the world that do standards, like DIN, ISO, IEEE, IEC/CEE, NEMA, BS/BSI, JIS, the list could go on and on.

Anyways, sorry for being a random Yankee passing through, carry on.
I forget who I am sometimes, but then I remember that it's probably not worth remembering.
EEVBlog IRC Admin - Join us on irc.austnet.org #eevblog
 

Offline BradC

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2104
  • Country: au
Re: Mains voltage poll (UK)
« Reply #15 on: November 22, 2017, 07:53:39 am »
Well, it's the middle of the day here in western Sydney and I just checked at a power point.  It varied between 233.7V and 236.1 V over a period of a minute.

WA was always a bit of an outlier. When I was a kid it was 250V.
Anyway, here's 2 phases at my place Red & Green are on the same phase. One is a vaguely accurate power meter, the other is an APC UPS. They mostly agree, but the meter is more accurate (as you'd imagine).
Blue is another UPS on a separate phase.
 

Offline Delta

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1221
  • Country: gb
Re: Mains voltage poll (UK)
« Reply #16 on: November 22, 2017, 07:55:07 am »
I normally see high 240s.

The "harmonisation" was purely political, not a single voltage regulator or transformer tap was changed.

All countries used to have tolerances od +/- 6%. 240v countries "harmonised" to 230 +10% / -6%. 220v countries "harmonised" to 230 -10% / +6%.

Do the maths, and you will see that to allowable voltage ranges are (almost) completely unchanged.

Genius!
 

Online Berni

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 4923
  • Country: si
Re: Mains voltage poll (UK)
« Reply #17 on: November 22, 2017, 08:09:41 am »
It can varry quite a lot.

I happened to test it yesterday:

L1: 237V
L2: 246V
L3: 215V

Third phase is low due to a 4kW heat pump running from it.
 

Offline Karel

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2214
  • Country: 00
Re: Mains voltage poll (UK)
« Reply #18 on: November 22, 2017, 08:35:47 am »
For the OP:  243.7V @ 49.7Hz at 20:32 UK time in the North-west

Wow, that frequency has a huge deviation from the nominal frequency.
What kind of instrument did you use?

Because according to this website that shows the actual powergrid frequency, it is generally much more accurate:

http://www.mainsfrequency.com/

 

Offline Moshly

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 139
  • Country: au
  • What's wrong with this thing
Re: Mains voltage poll (UK)
« Reply #19 on: November 22, 2017, 08:52:21 am »
Well, it's the middle of the day here in western Sydney and I just checked at a power point.  It varied between 233.7V and 236.1 V over a period of a minute.

Wow, that's some variation. Do you live in a third world country?  ;D

If you are on a farm in Australia then you probably have ->
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-wire_earth_return
 

Offline wraper

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 16796
  • Country: lv
Re: Mains voltage poll (UK)
« Reply #20 on: November 22, 2017, 09:10:05 am »
Hmm, I measured 229V in Riga, Latvia. Last time I measured it was good old 220V. I also don't recall ever measuring voltage going this high here unlike in rural areas. So probably 230V harmonization at work.
 

Offline Dubbie

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 1114
  • Country: nz
Re: Mains voltage poll (UK)
« Reply #21 on: November 22, 2017, 09:14:45 am »
239.8V here in NZ. I'm just across the street from the pole transformer which probably helps.
 

Offline AndyC_772

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 4208
  • Country: gb
  • Professional design engineer
    • Cawte Engineering | Reliable Electronics
Re: Mains voltage poll (UK)
« Reply #22 on: November 22, 2017, 09:23:33 am »
242.3V this morning here in Hampshire, measured using a Fluke 289 on the end of a lightly loaded IEC distribution block.

This is pretty typical, it's usually a little above 240V here.

Offline IanMacdonald

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 943
  • Country: gb
    • IWR Consultancy
Re: Mains voltage poll (UK)
« Reply #23 on: November 22, 2017, 10:01:33 am »
248.5 here in Scotland. Which is not unusual. Prior to EU dictatorship conquering us it used to be 240 +- 6% so that's still within limits. 
 

Online tszaboo

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7307
  • Country: nl
  • Current job: ATEX product design
Re: Mains voltage poll (UK)
« Reply #24 on: November 22, 2017, 10:08:22 am »
You know, it matters how far down the feeder you are measuring. Also during the day, solar power will raise the voltage. And other stuff, about a dozen other factor.
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf