Heads Up : Cheap Multimeter : Lidl UK (08/02/18)

[Gyro]

Actually, it was bitwelder's find... 

The TÜV certificate number printed on the meter looks also real: https://www.certipedia.com/quality_marks/1419042732?locale=en&certificate_number=50366474
Not much test details, but at least the page reports the fulfilled standards.

[Specmaster]

The IEC61010 compliance reference is in the TÜV test certificate...

https://www.certipedia.com/certificates/50366474?locale=en

Yep, "PDM 300 B1" is the model number stamped on the back of my meter.

Good find!

You and I have been vindicated in our belief that this meter did in fact meet the requirements after all.

[Gyro]

It says a lot that they went to TÜV (and got a GS mark too) rather than a lesser test house, they ain't cheap!

[Fungus]

Now I'm not at all familiar with what the standard for CAT III is

Not many people are. It's not a public document.

it strikes me that maybe it is not a requirement for the meter to still be operable after seeing a fault of that magnitude

I believe that's the consensus around here.

After looking inside I was sure this meter wasn't going to explode with 230V AC but I wasn't 100% sure it would still work after applying mains to the more "delicate" ranges.

(and the first time the screen went blank when I was zapping it was a bit worrying)

But... it survived and still works perfectly. 

[Fungus]

It says a lot that they went to TÜV (and got a GS mark too) rather than a lesser test house too, they ain't cheap!

A big supermarket like LIDL doesn't have much choice over things like that.

[Specmaster]

The thing is that Lidl I'm certain, often sell items at or sometimes below their cost price as a means of tempting new customers in to their stores and then while there make other impulse purchases from their normal stock lines. Things like these meters are only available maybe once a year as each week they have new special purchases as their "magnets" and its a ploy seems to be working well as I have seen my local store go from being very quiet to almost being rammed 7 days a week. The same is also true of their other major competitor Aldi, both of them employ these special purchases to attract customer into their stores and Aldi have just opened a second store in Chelmsford and I doubt that Lidl will be far behind.

So in real terms I fully expect that the true sales price for that meter should be much higher and anyone who has gotten one of them, I say well done to you.

[donkey77]

Isn't there some agreement that Lidl and Aldi don't compete in the same area/town?!

[Gyro]

Nope - on the A4 going into Reading, they are side by side! 

There's a no right-turn though, so you have to go to Lidl first. 

[Specmaster]

I understand that they are owned by two brothers who had a falling out and opened their own chain of stores and are both now worldwide. They are often to be found in the same towns as well.

What you often find is that they will both have similar offers within a very short period of time between them, albeit with different brand names, so it might be that the brand names are all made in the same factory anyway.

[Gyro]

No, I think that was the Lidl brothers (?) they split Germany between them.

Oops, no. It was the Aldi ones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldi

[donkey77]

I'm only down the road in Basingstoke. We've got 2 Lidl's, but no Aldi's. As yet.

[joeqsmith]

I suppose that table can be derated for lower voltages and internal resistance in the meter

...and because CAT III has at least one circuit breaker between you and the nearest substation.

If you live in a house where the mains sockets can demonstrably supply 50kA then I suggest you contact your electricity provider.

In your mind, CAT III is only in your house?    IEC shows <50KA so I suspect in some cases CAT III will be this high.  Most of the meters will use 10KA and up HRC fuses now.   Of course, it seems the GS people don't care about such things.  Water's them down as far as I am concerned. 

[markce]

Thanks for the link to the TUV certificate. So its the real deal. GS in itself does not mean much, except verification of the testhouse (TUV in this case). TUV Rheinland with the certification is what counts.

[Specmaster]

Oops, I stand corrected, I always thought that that the Aldi brothers split up and one of them formed Lidl but thats not the case at all, Lidl is in fact nothing to do with Aldi except from being one of the their biggest rivals. So they you go, learn something new everyday.

[Electro Detective]

I suppose that table can be derated for lower voltages and internal resistance in the meter

...and because CAT III has at least one circuit breaker between you and the nearest substation.

If you live in a house where the mains sockets can demonstrably supply 50kA then I suggest you contact your electricity provider.

In that situation, it may be the next of kin contacting the electricity provider   

[Specmaster]

I suppose that table can be derated for lower voltages and internal resistance in the meter

...and because CAT III has at least one circuit breaker between you and the nearest substation.

If you live in a house where the mains sockets can demonstrably supply 50kA then I suggest you contact your electricity provider.

Especially here in the UK where the normal practise is to run the power feed either along the side of the street or in the middle of the street and tap of to each house in turn. That then gives each house a reasonable length of cable from the tap-off point to the meter, then there are the meter tails, and at least 1 circuit breaker of a current limiting type plus the cable run from the circuit breaker to the socket in question.

The supply authorities demand that a dwelling be designed to handle a 16KA fault at the consumer unit, so the 50KA does not apply to domestic dwellings. I used to work for a manufacturer of domestic wiring accessories and it was calculated at the time of that regulation being introduced that the maximum fault current at the average socket in a domestic property was rarely going to exceed even 6KA once all the cable impedance had been taken into account and the speed of a modern MCB has already disconnected the supply before 50% of the maximum fault current has been reached and modern UK specification MCB's are all designed to safely handle a fault current of 10KA.

So that clearly suggests that this meter is fully rated for its intended use, with in and on normal domestic use as those fuses will safely handle 10KA otherwise it would not have have received the certification.

[Fungus]

Oops, I stand corrected, I always thought that that the Aldi brothers split up and one of them formed Lidl but thats not the case at all

It's a common belief. There's a half-heard story of a fight between two brothers, there's two stores with almost identical names and the same weird business model, but ... 2+2!=4 in this case.

[Monkeh]

The supply authorities demand that a dwelling be designed to handle a 16KA fault at the consumer unit

Since when? Not a single part of the CU is rated to handle 16kA that I've ever seen.

modern UK specification MCB's are all designed to safely handle a fault current of 10KA.

I think you'll find the rating on MCBs for single-phase installations is 6kA.

So that clearly suggests that this meter is fully rated for its intended use, with in and on normal domestic use as those fuses will safely handle 10KA otherwise it would not have have received the certification.

But you don't actually know what the standard requires as you haven't read it, nor have any of us seen the test reports.

Much clear, very data.

[Candid]

Oops, I stand corrected, I always thought that that the Aldi brothers split up and one of them formed Lidl...

The Aldi brothers split Aldi germany in Aldi north and Aldi south what it is until today.

[Specmaster]

The supply authorities demand that a dwelling be designed to handle a 16KA fault at the consumer unit

Since when? Not a single part of the CU is rated to handle 16kA that I've ever seen.

modern UK specification MCB's are all designed to safely handle a fault current of 10KA.

I think you'll find the rating on MCBs for single-phase installations is 6kA.

So that clearly suggests that this meter is fully rated for its intended use, with in and on normal domestic use as those fuses will safely handle 10KA otherwise it would not have have received the certification.

But you don't actually know what the standard requires as you haven't read it, nor have any of us seen the test reports.

Much clear, very data.

All UK manufacturers design and test their consumer units to whats known as 16KA Conditional rating and this is mentioned in their technical data sections of their catalogues.

Yes there are some single phase MCB's that are rated at 6KA and there are others on sale in the UK that are also rated at 10KA, again look in the technical section of some of the catalogues and you'll see MCB's  categorised as being either 6KA or 10KA

[Monkeh]

All UK manufacturers design and test their consumer units to whats known as 16KA Conditional rating and this is mentioned in their technical data sections of their catalogues.

16kA conditional is handwaving. The upstream fuse does all the work.

Yes there are some single phase MCB's that are rated at 6KA and there are others on sale in the UK that are also rated at 10KA, again look in the technical section of some of the catalogues and you'll see MCB's  categorised as being either 6KA or 10KA

I didn't say single-phase MCBs, I said MCBs for single-phase installations. Units designed for three-phase installations are 10kA rated. All the major manufacturers have separate lines for trivial domestic installs and commercial and industrial ones where fault currents are significant.

[joeqsmith]

So that clearly suggests that this meter is fully rated for its intended use, with in and on normal domestic use as those fuses will safely handle 10KA otherwise it would not have have received the certification.

I wonder how many times a product has been certified, then the design changes but the company still uses the old cert.   In the case of fuses, that would be a simple thing to replace.   The ones Dave was selling I believe were rated for 10KA breaking capacity.  From Fungus's review, I have know idea if the fuses were even certified or not.  We have to just go on his expert opinion that they are fine.   

[Specmaster]

All UK manufacturers design and test their consumer units to whats known as 16KA Conditional rating and this is mentioned in their technical data sections of their catalogues.

16kA conditional is handwaving. The upstream fuse does all the work.

Exactly, and this is what I said "The supply authorities demand that a dwelling be designed to handle a 16KA fault at the consumer unit" If this means that a suitably rated fuse needs to be inserted between their service fuse and the customers circuits then so be it. That "fuse" needs to discriminate between their fuse so the Intermediary fuse is the sacrificial element and as such becomes the clients responsibility for replacement rather then the electricity board having to to be called out to replace their fuse and or reset / replace circuit protection devices further upstream. Hence the terminology 16KA conditional. The only location where this is likely to happen in a domestic situation is right at the consumer unit which is fed via either 16 or 20mm cables, any other location after the consumer unit will also have the attenuation of the MCB it self and the cable, which for a 13A socket on a ring main is more then likely to be connected to either 2.5mm or 4mm cables and normally will have 2m or more of cable run to the socket to take into account as well.

I didn't say single-phase MCBs, I said MCBs for single-phase installations. Units designed for three-phase installations are 10kA rated. All the major manufacturers have separate lines for trivial domestic installs and commercial and industrial ones where fault currents are significant.

There is nothing to prevent either a 6KA or a 10KA single pole device being installed in a domestic installation. I think that some of them are interchangeable, many of these MCB's are 17.5mm wide but even if they are not, a single phase board designed for industrial/commercial use can be and indeed many have been fitted into domestic dwellings.

[Monkeh]

All UK manufacturers design and test their consumer units to whats known as 16KA Conditional rating and this is mentioned in their technical data sections of their catalogues.

16kA conditional is handwaving. The upstream fuse does all the work.

Exactly, and this is what I said "The supply authorities demand that a dwelling be designed to handle a 16KA fault at the consumer unit" If this means that a suitably rated fuse needs to be inserted between their service fuse and the customers circuits then so be it.

Uh, said upstream fuse is their service fuse. The big BS1361 one in the cutout before the meter. As I said, handwaving - if they were actually in any way capable of handling such energy they'd actually be rated for it, not 'type tested' while being protected by another device!

[Specmaster]

All UK manufacturers design and test their consumer units to whats known as 16KA Conditional rating and this is mentioned in their technical data sections of their catalogues.

16kA conditional is handwaving. The upstream fuse does all the work.

Exactly, and this is what I said "The supply authorities demand that a dwelling be designed to handle a 16KA fault at the consumer unit" If this means that a suitably rated fuse needs to be inserted between their service fuse and the customers circuits then so be it.

Uh, said upstream fuse is their service fuse. The big BS1361 one in the cutout before the meter. As I said, handwaving - if they were actually in any way capable of handling such energy they'd actually be rated for it, not 'type tested' while being protected by another device!

Agreed, but I never said that the consumer unit could handle it, I said that circuit had to be designed such that a fault of that magnitude occurring at the CU must be cleared without taking out the service cutout fuse. This was because they were experiencing a lot of call outs to replace their service fuses so they wanted designers to build in a consumer replaceable sacrifice fuse that would descrimanate with the service fuse only blowing if the fault exceeded the 16KA declared value.

I hope that this draws a line on this issue as it actually detracts from the original thread IMHO and we are both pretty much on the same page in reality.