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UK to attempt to ban the sale of halogen bulbs.

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madires:
Dimming LEDs via SCR/TRIAC based dimmers meant for incandescents seems to me the worst work-around possible.

Zero999:

--- Quote from: TheBay on June 12, 2021, 12:38:18 am ---The supply here is 245-250V+, as most products are designed now for the "harmonised" voltage standard, bulbs and heater elements (such as ovens, showers and kettles) don't last as long as they should. Also some capacitors in SMPSU's are right on their limit for a 230V rated supply and do not cope very well with the UK voltage.

I remember when products (usually with linear transformers) had a 220/230 and 240V setting.

My lutron system will fade incandescent/halogen bulbs down so low they are barely visible, it is a fantastic system but it does not play nicely with some LED's and none will dim as low as traditional bulbs.
--- End quote ---
Do some LED bulbs run at reduced brightness? Many modern LED lamps contain a high voltage string of LEDs and a linear regulator, which drops the last 20V or so. It works fine, when the mains voltage is within the normal specification and the lamp is cool enough, but if the voltage is too high, the linear regulator can overheat, causing it to throttle back the current limit.

Have you spoken to whoever runs your local electricity grid?

If they won't reduce the voltage, you could reduce the voltage to your house by adding an autotransformer. A 1kVA 230V:25V mains transformer, wired as an autotransformer (check the phasing of course) could be used to knock off just over 20V off the supply voltage and should give enough current capacity to power a ring of sockets and a lighting circuit. I don't know if such an arrangement would conform to the wiring regulations. Ask an electrician, if you're unsure.

james_s:

--- Quote from: madires on June 12, 2021, 02:25:35 pm ---Dimming LEDs via SCR/TRIAC based dimmers meant for incandescents seems to me the worst work-around possible.

--- End quote ---

Well the idea is the dimmers are already there, and they want people to buy the bulbs. Most of us here could replace a dimmer with a new one easily but most ordinary people have to hire an electrician or handyman and that's expensive. Trailing edge dimmers do work much better than the inexpensive triac type though.

I do have some that will dim some LED bulbs down to a very dim glow rather than snapping off. They are dimmers that were originally meant for dimmable CFL and have a pot behind the faceplate that you can use to set the bottom end to avoid having a dead band where the lamps just go out.

TheBay:
I've had numerous bits of monitoring test equipment put here from Western Power Distribution, I started logging the voltage here and the fluctuations (Flickering bulbs, noisy EI and Toroid transformers) And could see it was going up and down +/- 20V some days and also 47-51Hz. When one of the engineers visited here I showed him what was going on in my workshop and he took it very seriously (Probably helped he was also a radio ham) The problem is I live a few feet away from a larger Wafer Fabrication plant, it was INMOS then International Rectifier (Not sure what it is called now) And that uses a crapptone of electricity so we are all affected here when they put a big load on the grid, even though they have their own substation etc. So it's very hard for them to compensate for the properties near by. In addition to that the HUGE EX LG Electronics plant is just a stone throw down the road and that contains the largest data centre in Europe, not to mention other manufacturing plants. So I've given up as there isn't much they can realistically do and we are moving house this year hopefully!



--- Quote from: Zero999 on June 12, 2021, 06:03:39 pm ---
--- Quote from: TheBay on June 12, 2021, 12:38:18 am ---The supply here is 245-250V+, as most products are designed now for the "harmonised" voltage standard, bulbs and heater elements (such as ovens, showers and kettles) don't last as long as they should. Also some capacitors in SMPSU's are right on their limit for a 230V rated supply and do not cope very well with the UK voltage.

I remember when products (usually with linear transformers) had a 220/230 and 240V setting.

My lutron system will fade incandescent/halogen bulbs down so low they are barely visible, it is a fantastic system but it does not play nicely with some LED's and none will dim as low as traditional bulbs.
--- End quote ---
Do some LED bulbs run at reduced brightness? Many modern LED lamps contain a high voltage string of LEDs and a linear regulator, which drops the last 20V or so. It works fine, when the mains voltage is within the normal specification and the lamp is cool enough, but if the voltage is too high, the linear regulator can overheat, causing it to throttle back the current limit.

Have you spoken to whoever runs your local electricity grid?

If they won't reduce the voltage, you could reduce the voltage to your house by adding an autotransformer. A 1kVA 230V:25V mains transformer, wired as an autotransformer (check the phasing of course) could be used to knock off just over 20V off the supply voltage and should give enough current capacity to power a ring of sockets and a lighting circuit. I don't know if such an arrangement would conform to the wiring regulations. Ask an electrician, if you're unsure.

--- End quote ---

james_s:

--- Quote from: TheBay on June 12, 2021, 06:18:58 pm ---I've had numerous bits of monitoring test equipment put here from Western Power Distribution, I started logging the voltage here and the fluctuations (Flickering bulbs, noisy EI and Toroid transformers) And could see it was going up and down +/- 20V some days and also 47-51Hz. When one of the engineers visited here I showed him what was going on in my workshop and he took it very seriously (Probably helped he was also a radio ham) The problem is I live a few feet away from a larger Wafer Fabrication plant, it was INMOS then International Rectifier (Not sure what it is called now) And that uses a crapptone of electricity so we are all affected here when they put a big load on the grid, even though they have their own substation etc. So it's very hard for them to compensate for the properties near by. In addition to that the HUGE EX LG Electronics plant is just a stone throw down the road and that contains the largest data centre in Europe, not to mention other manufacturing plants. So I've given up as there isn't much they can realistically do and we are moving house this year hopefully!

--- End quote ---

That's one of the rare applications where I might actually look at getting a big double conversion UPS and put a whole circuit on it. One of those buck/boost voltage stabilizer transformers might actually be useful there too. I never had a use for any of that stuff here, my voltage is stable to within a couple of volts.

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