Voltis Home -voltage optimiser - Anyone actually got one?

scotsblood

I've searched and read a lot of posts that mention the Voltis device but does anyone actually have one and if so does it actually make a difference?

Solar pv sparky is recommending it as part of install package but I remain unconvinced. Glossy doesn't make any actual claim of savings and only if you dig deep into the website do you find the suggestion " you should expect to see an overall saving in a typical household of between 9 and 13%".
A very different figure to the 25% that was being suggested a year ago and by those trotting out quotes from other forums.

Can anyone give a real life review?

zeupater

scotsblood wrote: »

I've searched and read a lot of posts that mention the Voltis device but does anyone actually have one and if so does it actually make a difference?

Solar pv sparky is recommending it as part of install package but I remain unconvinced. Glossy doesn't make any actual claim of savings and only if you dig deep into the website do you find the suggestion " you should expect to see an overall saving in a typical household of between 9 and 13%".
A very different figure to the 25% that was being suggested a year ago and by those trotting out quotes from other forums.

Can anyone give a real life review?

Hi

I would suggest that if you ever see a positive review for voltage optimisation in a domestic environment which references any significant level of saving it'll almost certainly be written by someone concerned with supply and/or installation.

Voltage optimisation, and more importantly power factor correction can be extremely cost beneficitial in commercial/industrial facilities where metering & billing work slightly differently, but domestic metering is purely based on kWh consumed, so it would make very little difference, for example a kettle running at a voltage corrected from 245V to 220V would take ~11% longer to boil and would consume the same amount of energy (Okay - for the pedants out there ... it would actually take more energy due to the radiative/convective heatloss within the ~11% additional time, but you know what I mean .... )

If you're currently 'unconvinced' it would be a pretty good move to remain so ....

HTH
Z

rogerblack

scotsblood wrote: »

" you should expect to see an overall saving in a typical household of between 9 and 13%".

As someone with an understanding of how most devices in the home operate - I am extremely sceptical of this figure.

Some items of electronic equipment may be moderately more efficient at slightly higher, or lower than nominal supply voltage.
Which may depend on load.
All thermostatic devices - as mentioned above - will use essentially the same power.
In principle, it could be of value for areas with high mains voltage, using incandescant lights, which will burn out more rapidly, and use more power at a higher voltage.

For most appliances in the modern home, especially ones designed to be 'energy efficient' - I would be surprised to see savings exceeding 1% on average, comparing running on 230 or 250V.

As a large fraction of the actual load is thermostatic heating elements still, this is well below 1% of actual power use.

I would actually try measuring some power supplies and stuff, but that would mean getting out of bed.

The first datasheet I happened to find was http://www.st.com/internet/com/TECHNICAL_RESOURCES/TECHNICAL_LITERATURE/DATASHEET/CD00290935.pdf

Which figure 23 gives efficiency for a range of voltages for this prototype power supply.
76% at 150V input, dropping to 74% at 250V, and 73 at 270.

Over the range 220-250 (which a voltage optimiser might fix the output to), the efficiency variation is about half a percent.
And the amount of energy wasted (which is what you care about) is half a percent times 100-74% (25%) or about .1%.

However, some appliances will use more at higher voltages, some at lower.

Additionally.
What is the warranty on this device?
It is likely that when it fails, all your lights, heating and other equipment connected to it goes off.

Sanders

I have checked this unit out. It's well made and will do what it sets out to - but its value to the end user is more questionable. This is an approach that works better in a commercial building.

It just taps down the incoming supply voltage by a fixed 9% ratio, so is a very simple voltage reduction device. It has a bypass to use if it recognises the voltage has fallen too much, so it will switch itself in and out of use. Assuming the house has an average incoming voltage of 240 Volts, then it will drop that voltage level to 218 Volts. The effects though are mixed.
Electrical heating loads will take longer to reach temperature, so will not save. TV's computers fluorescent lighting - i.e. devices with electronic supply to them will simply adjust to take the load they require, so will not deliver savings. Outdated filament lamps will save, as they will become dimmer as less voltage reaches them, but that's a reducing amount of load today, as people switch to LED lighting, where the light loss may be unwelcome ! My calculations show a possible 10% reduction in kWh P.A. but that is a poor payback of 12 years....so not an attractive R.O.I.

Murchison2003

I see this is quite an old topic but was sent the link today by a friend as he knows i have one and he too is unconvinced they work, so here's an answer from someone who has one.
I fitted my Voltis Home unit approx 11 months ago and i have seen a remarkable reduction in my kwh usage.
I fitted a ground source heat pump approx 5 years ago as i was getting fed up by ever increasing fuel costs as i had initially installed an oil boiler as i have no mains gas. Over this past year i have seen an approx 18% reduction in my electricity bill, coincidence? don't think so. This thing does exactly what it says it's gonig to do in the brochure. Admittedly a normal household may not see the money savings as i have. Because i have a heatpump my annual consumption was approx 17500 kwh in total for the year, in the 11 months i have had it i have consumed approx 14000 kwh.
As for some comments of kettles taking longer to boil, lights dimmer etc, have seen no difference, oh i have seen one, i don't change so much light bulbs now as they are lasting longer.
For high domestic users definately fit one, mine has paid for itself already. My new monthly standing order for my electric is £30 cheaper for next year as my electric deal is slightly more expensive due to us getting constantly ripped off by power companies ever increasing prices.
Hope this helps.

lstar337

Murchison2003 wrote: »

I see this is quite an old topic but was sent the link today by a friend as he knows i have one and he too is unconvinced they work, so here's an answer from someone who has one.
I fitted my Voltis Home unit approx 11 months ago and i have seen a remarkable reduction in my kwh usage.
I fitted a ground source heat pump approx 5 years ago as i was getting fed up by ever increasing fuel costs as i had initially installed an oil boiler as i have no mains gas. Over this past year i have seen an approx 18% reduction in my electricity bill, coincidence? don't think so. This thing does exactly what it says it's gonig to do in the brochure. Admittedly a normal household may not see the money savings as i have. Because i have a heatpump my annual consumption was approx 17500 kwh in total for the year, in the 11 months i have had it i have consumed approx 14000 kwh.
As for some comments of kettles taking longer to boil, lights dimmer etc, have seen no difference, oh i have seen one, i don't change so much light bulbs now as they are lasting longer.
For high domestic users definately fit one, mine has paid for itself already. My new monthly standing order for my electric is £30 cheaper for next year as my electric deal is slightly more expensive due to us getting constantly ripped off by power companies ever increasing prices.
Hope this helps.

How much are you selling these for, spammer?

zeupater

Murchison2003 wrote: »

I see this is quite an old topic but was sent the link today by a friend as he knows i have one and he too is unconvinced they work, so here's an answer from someone who has one.
I fitted my Voltis Home unit approx 11 months ago and i have seen a remarkable reduction in my kwh usage.
I fitted a ground source heat pump approx 5 years ago as i was getting fed up by ever increasing fuel costs as i had initially installed an oil boiler as i have no mains gas. Over this past year i have seen an approx 18% reduction in my electricity bill, coincidence? don't think so. This thing does exactly what it says it's gonig to do in the brochure. Admittedly a normal household may not see the money savings as i have. Because i have a heatpump my annual consumption was approx 17500 kwh in total for the year, in the 11 months i have had it i have consumed approx 14000 kwh.
As for some comments of kettles taking longer to boil, lights dimmer etc, have seen no difference, oh i have seen one, i don't change so much light bulbs now as they are lasting longer.
For high domestic users definately fit one, mine has paid for itself already. My new monthly standing order for my electric is £30 cheaper for next year as my electric deal is slightly more expensive due to us getting constantly ripped off by power companies ever increasing prices.
Hope this helps.

Hi

There's a pretty obvious reason for the saving you've seen over the past 11 months and it's got absolutely nothing to do with voltage optimisation.

If you like I'll (and if I don't someone else will) go into the logic and supporting mathematics to illustrate the point month-by-month which will probably completely destroy any claims of 18% savings over the past 11 months being due to voltage optimisation equipment in a normal domestic environment, but in the meantime consider the following average annual temperature anomaly (against the 1961-1990 average of 9.47C) over the past 5 years since your heat-pump was installed ( Source Met Office HadCet : http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/index.html )

2010 : -0.64C
2011 : +1.24C
2012 : +0.22C
2013 : +0.10C
2014 (To Date) : +1.48C

As you can see from the above and it's source data, the year in which the 18% saving has appeared includes an extraordinarily warm winter/spring period in a year which is currently showing as being 1.48C warmer than the standard 30year average, but more significantly, it's been warmer than the average since the heat-pump was installed ..... to coin a recently used phrase 'coincidence? don't think so'.

For comparison, the majority of our household heating is provided by wood & last winter we only burned around half the of logs in our burner when compared with average and that's got nothing to do with any form of power optimisation other than not letting the house become too warm ...

Regarding the kettle taking the same time to boil ... well, if the average mains voltage at a particular location is 230V and the voltage is being optimised to 230V then of course there would be no averaged time difference to make a :coffee: ... but then again, if this is the case why would anyone need voltage optimisation in the first place ?? ... :doh:

HTH
Z

Cardew

WHICH lists 'Eco products you don't need' and includes voltage optimisers.

YouGen concluded:

From our initial studies, the savings do not arise for most residential end-users, and are minimal where they do occur.

Read the Advertising Standards Authority(ASA) judgement:

http://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2012/5/Marshall_Tufflex-Energy-Management-Ltd/SHP_ADJ_186374.aspx#.VADecXR0zL8

The claim breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising) and 3.7 (Substantiation).

zeupater

Cardew wrote: »

WHICH lists 'Eco products you don't need' and includes voltage optimisers.

YouGen concluded:



Read the Advertising Standards Authority(ASA) judgement:

http://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2012/5/Marshall_Tufflex-Energy-Management-Ltd/SHP_ADJ_186374.aspx#.VADecXR0zL8

Hi Cardew

Reading that I had a :idea: moment .....

If for some reason someone had an underground property with a reasonably high supply voltage and no windows with resistive (filament) bulbs on all of the time to keep the houseplants healthy, a voltage optimiser could significantly reduce the energy consumption .....

..... but it soon became a :wall: moment (& we're talking whole milliseconds here !) as it dawned that you'd need to the correct the lighting levels through increasing the number of light-bulbs proportionately to the voltage correction (decrease) or the houseplants might suffer from photon starvation .....

Ah well, suppose I'll just remain content with having windows and not too many indoor plants .... :cool:

Z

Murchison2003

Zeupater
I don't usually post or join forums, i was a member of the green energy forum but left cos i got fed up with experts like you, who, i assume doesn't have the product in question, throwing facts and figures around which only in my opinion, just irritates people, really you must have too much time on your hands, that's all i can say.
I only posted to give my view on the results i have seen, not to get involved in a slagging match.
I live in the far North of the country where it doesn't seem to be getting 'warmer', my house temp is never below 22.5 deg 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, that's all i can say.

theboylard

Chiming in before I head out, most of us on here have an enormous amount of respect the likes of z, rogerblack and cardew.

I don't know them personally, but the information and sound explanations of various technologies using bona fide sources which are openly referenced, continues to amaze me.

If you would care to share more than anecdotal claims, then I thin all of us would love to hear more?