Voltage harmoniser ????

lindabea

Hi Can anyone please tell me what a voltage harmoniser is? Apparently, it's some gadget that reduces the voltage from 240 to 220 thereby saving electricity cost. I'd be grateful if someone can explain more and whether it's worth considering.

penrhyn

Any heating device cooker, heater, electric iron etc with a thermostat would simply take a little longer to get to temperature, consuming the same amount of power in the process.

fwor

For a few items - such as conventional light bulbs - you would get slightly less light output and would save a small amount.

But most electrical appliances with modern (switched mode) power supplies are designed to simply compensate, so they will consume almost exactly the same power at 240V as at 220V.

You're likely to see much bigger gains by buying appliances with low power consumption, and not leaving power-hungry appliances on standby.

Fifer

fwor wrote: »

For a few items - such as conventional light bulbs - you would get slightly less light output and would save a small amount.

Which you could do more reliably by using lower wattage lamps. Particularly as, whatever the 'harmoniser' is, unless it is perfect (which is impossible), there will be power loss (and waste) within it.

I suspect the item in the OP is the electrical equivalent of snake oil. For any given level of heat, light or other useful output, power is the significant requirement, not voltage. And power is a factor of voltage and current. For the same output, lower voltage requires more current and the same cost. (Or more actually, accounting for the inevitable losses in the harmoniser).

John_Gray

Snake oil? You may think so, but our local city council has been approached by a firm which has done tests on a number of the council buildings (we got a meter for about a week) and they considered that there could be worthwhile cost savings in this idea. "No win, no fee" probably!

Here's an article on voltage optimisation. A side effect of this approach is the reduction in spikes, which is a (secondary) function of the UPSes which are used for servers and other sensitive electronic equipment.

Whether it would save any real money on the domestic scale, I wouldn't like to say...

Hammyman

Yeah...worthwhile in a building with 100s of light bulbs, computers etc all on the go all day long.

Fifer

John_Gray wrote: »

Snake oil? You may think so, but our local city council has been approached by a firm which has done tests on a number of the council buildings (we got a meter for about a week) and they considered that there could be worthwhile cost savings in this idea. "No win, no fee" probably!

Here's an article on voltage optimisation. A side effect of this approach is the reduction in spikes, which is a (secondary) function of the UPSes which are used for servers and other sensitive electronic equipment.

Whether it would save any real money on the domestic scale, I wouldn't like to say...

I hope the council's 'no win, no fee' deal is more reliable than one I encountered at a major multinational who installed an energy saving device in the gas supply to the boiler house which proved to be worthless. Despite going to court, they never got their money back.

espresso

Fifer wrote: »

I suspect the item in the OP is the electrical equivalent of snake oil.

It's certainly not snake oil. Many companies have been using this voltage optimisation technology for several years now, see here for some examples, saving these companies significant amounts on their electricity bills e.g. Tesco annual energy savings of £8.2m and more are installing each year.

Domestic units like the VPhase are now available. Savings would depend on what electrical appliances you actually use e.g. heating (immersion heaters, storage heaters, showers, ovens, saunas etc.) would not achieve any saving using customer voltage regulation. However typical examples of savings on other domestic electrical appliances are given here and average 10%.

Is a year on year average 10% saving on your electricity bill and longer life of electrical appliance worth while?

Fifer

espresso wrote: »

It's certainly not snake oil. Many companies have been using this voltage optimisation technology for several years now, see here for some examples, saving these companies significant amounts on their electricity bills e.g. Tesco annual energy savings of £8.2m and more are installing each year.

Domestic units like the VPhase are now available. Savings would depend on what electrical appliances you actually use e.g. heating (immersion heaters, storage heaters, showers, ovens, saunas etc.) would not achieve any saving using customer voltage regulation. However typical examples of savings on other domestic electrical appliances are given here and average 10%.

Is a year on year average 10% saving on your electricity bill and longer life of electrical appliance worth while?

Hmmmmm. From your link:

Incandescent bulb
15% energy saving

For the same light output? Really?

sillygoose

Proper Power Factor Correction systems have been used for years in commercial situations, where the demands of for example 100's of switched mode PC power supplies benefit from phase alignment between current demands and AC voltage peaks. Even so thats as much about smoothing out the load on the facilities power system than consumption.

But this stuff is just... snake oil, probably from the snake that bit Lembit at that!

lindabea

Thanks guys for all your replies. Sounds like it's a device mainly used by organisations rather than for domestic use. I came across it in a leaflet I received from Everest. They don't say much about it, except that it could save me around £135.00 a year in a typical household. HMMM - I'm always sceptical about claims like these.

Does anyone know what the installation cost might be?