Mains optimiser - Saves you £££??

JohalaReewi

According to my home UPS, the incoming voltage to our house during the day is approx 225V. It only seems to get near 240V overnight. YMMV

parody

I believe different areas of the country have different average voltages, the general range is something between 216 and 253 volts, as it was re alighned to 230v +/- a certain tolerance to be in line with european laws.

JohalaReewi wrote: »

According to my home UPS, the incoming voltage to our house during the day is approx 225V. It only seems to get near 240V overnight. YMMV

Cardew

parody wrote: »

it may even be more efficient for a heating element to run slightly longer on a lower voltage (i'm not an electrician, but do remember efficiency being related to power on a basic level).

So don't knock it by by making assumptions. This device is about to be trialed with scotish and southern energy for Ofgem certification, has won numerous awards and is a proven idea already benefitting many commercial premesis. The difference here is making it available for the domestic market.

From what I have read the payback for investment for the average domestic user is meant to be the same as loft insulation (2 years). Now thats not bad for something which you can install and forget about. If this made it into new build homes and even a small % of homeowners purchase one (particularly those with no gas supply) the CO2 savings could be enormous, which to me is a very simple and straight forward way of helping save the planet, and a few quid at the same time.

For all practical purposes electrical heating is 100% efficient. So dropping the voltage will not improve the efficiency. The law Georg Simon Ohm gave us in the 19th century still applies!!!

The only reason those with no gas supply use more electricity, is because they use electricity for heating; and, as said above, it will not lower heating costs!

The USA uses 115 volts for mains - their heaters and appliances ain't any more efficient than those in Europe.

Premier_2

parody wrote: »

I own shares in this company ...

... but to me it looks like a no-brainer.

It looks like that was the approach you took when you invested in them :eek:

The share price says it all. Was trading about 6p - 8p (peaking at 9p) over the past 12 months, now fallen to just over 4p within the last month.

A quick look at the financials shows that although the company, formally known as Flightstore Group Plc, was incorporated back in 2003 and did have growing revenues in 2004 & 2005, it appears no revenue has been attained since 2006...just burning cash. (see edit 3 below)

Annual expenditure after tax appears to be:
2006: £26k
2007: £186k
2008: £769k

The company has no earnings, is burning more & more cash year on year, the product is flawed. Guess what the dragons would say on this business idea. :rolleyes:

If I were you, I'd cash in your chips as soon as you can.


Edit: doesn't look good if you bought in in May 2008 when the company went to the market to raise £3.5m @ 5p per share.

Major sells last Tuesday. Someone (or possibly 2 sellers) dumped 1.5million shares in 2 trades for just 4p each.
Usual trading volume, about 10,000 shares per trade.
Take the hint.;)

Edit2:

parody wrote: »

...it may even be more efficient for a heating element to run slightly longer on a lower voltage...

Er, no. Even the company admit it won't save a penny on any electrical heating.

... Appliances that will not save energy are electrical heating devices that operate to a thermostatically controlled level; these appliances continue to consume the same amount of energy when voltage is reduced...

http://www.vphaseplc.com/Files/product/brochures/VphaseV1Jfinallowres.pdf (page 2)

Edit3:
In the first half of 2009. the company did achieve revenues of £60k ... but the cost of those sales was £50k, resulting in just £10k gross profit.

However after burning another £430k in admin costs (2008: £369), it means they've already reported a £412k pre-tax mid year loss this year so far.

BonandDom

Quote from someone who has mixed opinions (makes no sense to me - but may to you electrician guys)
1.Voltage reduction/optimisation.

Optimising or reducing the voltage has had mixed results which are very dependent on the types of loads applied but in theory reducing the voltage the kWh will reduce (P = V2/Z). From this formula a 2.5% reduction in voltage can lead to a 5% reduction in kWh. This is actually supported by many including the following statement;

High voltages are actually having two negative effects;

A. Reducing the life expectancy of the connected equipment i.e. a 230V rated lamp operating at 240V will achieve only 55% of its rated life” (failing after 550hrs instead of 1000 hours)*.

B. Increased energy consumption i.e. a 230V linear appliance used on a 240V supply will take 4.3% more current and consume almost 9% more energy*.

* Extracts from IEE 16th edition guide BS7671.

In many cases there is no disputing the obvious technical merits of reducing the voltage it is invariably the commercial cost versus payback on how it is achieved.

parody

As I said... I'm not an electrician! And I'm glad they say that in their own literature.

I think you are missing the point homing in on my inaccuracies of whether it saves money on heating and my choice of investment. If this is a proven technology on the commercial scale, and the largest energy companies are interested in distributing it to achieve CERT targets, I don't think it's a waste of time. With the enormous focus on energy & co2 savings not going away, ignoring a product like this which is in the same category as loft insulation, renewing your boiler, energy saving bulbs etc (vs expensive solar conversions etc) is short sighted. Maybe it wouldn't do well if you expect to buy it from b&q, but in partnership with scottish & southern energy and british gas, housing associations, plus plans and interest for US and Europe distribution it's hard to ignore.

As for the lack of revenue the CE certification was achieved in June, give them a chance. Time will tell. I don't have enough shares to worry about loosing, but enough that if they do well I will be smiling. I'm more interested in a good product doing its bit in a world fast becoming heavily focused on energy usage (wastage) whether we like it or not

parody

I agree, the technicalities are nothing without the marketing or the market to consume it. Which I believe is where this product bridges the gap - bringing a technology already proven commercially to a financially viable domestic solution.

Perhaps only the most energy conscious of us would have one installed (how many of us go out of our way to replace the boiler if its working fine...), but how many would complain if it was already installed in a house we were buying, or offered via our electricity supplier at a subsidised cost?

BonandDom wrote: »

In many cases there is no disputing the obvious technical merits of reducing the voltage it is invariably the commercial cost versus payback on how it is achieved. [/FONT][/LEFT][/LEFT]

Cardew

BonandDom wrote: »

Quote from someone who has mixed opinions (makes no sense to me - but may to you electrician guys)
1.Voltage reduction/optimisation.

Optimising or reducing the voltage has had mixed results which are very dependent on the types of loads applied but in theory reducing the voltage the kWh will reduce (P = V2/Z). From this formula a 2.5% reduction in voltage can lead to a 5% reduction in kWh. This is actually supported by many including the following statement;

High voltages are actually having two negative effects;

A. Reducing the life expectancy of the connected equipment i.e. a 230V rated lamp operating at 240V will achieve only 55% of its rated life” (failing after 550hrs instead of 1000 hours)*.

B. Increased energy consumption i.e. a 230V linear appliance used on a 240V supply will take 4.3% more current and consume almost 9% more energy*.

* Extracts from IEE 16th edition guide BS7671.

In many cases there is no disputing the obvious technical merits of reducing the voltage it is invariably the commercial cost versus payback on how it is achieved.

We are in danger of thinking that dropping our mains voltage down to 220 volts is always a good thing. It ain't! If it was the generating companies would supply us at 220 volts.

For heating devices designed for a nominal 240 volts(as most are in UK) dropping the voltage to 220volts means they produce approx 15% less heat. My 10kW electric shower is now a 8.5kW shower and the hot water flow is less. Kettles take longer to boil, electric fires give out less heat etc etc etc.

Andy_WSM

Cardew wrote: »

We are in danger of thinking that dropping our mains voltage down to 220 volts is always a good thing. It ain't! If it was the generating companies would supply us at 220 volts.

For heating devices designed for a nominal 240 volts(as most are in UK) dropping the voltage to 220volts means they produce approx 15% less heat. My 10kW electric shower is now a 8.5kW shower and the hot water flow is less. Kettles take longer to boil, electric fires give out less heat etc etc etc.

The company (Vphase) do make this caveat themselves on their website. The device is designed to be wired only to those circuits that don't have resistive heating loads - That's a tricky thing to achieve in most households though. i.e. I have resistive loads plugged in to the ring main, which is also where most of my wasteful appliances are likely to be. Things like tumble driers obviously have both inductive & resistive loads, so while the motor will be happy to run at 220V the heater element won't be as effective, increasing drying time - presumably eliminating all savings made by running the motor more efficiently.

They are liaising with consumer unit manufacturers to see about getting a device like this incorporated into a consumer unit, but IMO, this would also mean having to plan household wiring smarter in the future so that you can easily eliminate resistive loads from having their power dropped. (i.e. having to sets of sockets around the house, one for resistive heating, one for all other loads?).

- Another good reason for this is that the device is good for a continuous load of about 8A (~2KW?), an overload current of 20A (~4KW) otherwise it will switch itself into bypass mode.

The idea seems great, retrospectively adding it to most households could prove to be a problem though.

BonandDom

parody wrote: »

I think you are missing the point homing in on my inaccuracies of whether it saves money on heating and my choice of investment.
My point has always been that (if you read my previous post) that yes it could save money but the payback for domestic property is quite a long time - as you said 2 years - and that is assuming there are no installation costs.
I'm more interested in a good product doing its bit in a world fast becoming heavily focused on energy usage (wastage) whether we like it or not - I applaud you in this area, we should all be doing our bit, at the moment the goverment is concemtrating on the heavy users reducing thier wastage but it wont be long before they turn thier attention to you and I

Do you know , just curious, do these units attach to the fuse box?

What we should be looking at is the electricity suppliers - they should be regulating the voltage, as they are the ones supplying more than we need. But thats a different argument altogether.