Talk:Voltage optimisation

Spam?

I agree this looks like spam. The arguments claimed don't really hold together from a physics, engineering and system perspective. For resistive devices (heaters, kettles, incandescent filament lightbulbs) then yes the instantaneous power will drop when the voltage is reduced... but this comes at the penalty of the lamp being dimmer (and the bulb actually being LESS efficient because of the shift to a lower filament-temperature and colour-temperature), the kettle taking longer to boil (and being /slightly/ less efficient as that's more time for the heat to escape), or for a thermostatically-controlled heater, then the thermostatic duty cycle will lengthen to consume the same overall energy. For electronic appliances with switch-mode power supplies, such as computers, TVs, phone chargers..., the power drawn will be constant (or in accordance with the appliance internal demand), and so the current drawn will increase as the supply voltage is forcibly reduced (so no energy savings). First law of thermodynamics - you can't get something for nothing.217.33.180.66 (talk) 19:07, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Could we get some third-party confirmation that this actually exists? It looks like spam, and I'm always concerned about one-topic editors. --Wtshymanski (talk) 20:46, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

This article needs some attention. As it stands it is simply the (mostly unreferenced) marketing spiel of an employee or associate of PowerPerfector. You can check this by comparison to their website. eg. I did a quick check and you can find all of the businesses listed in the first paragraph on the PowerPerfector site under 'Case Studies'. Come to think of it, I don't see why it should be necessary, in an engineering article, to list adopters of the technology. 86.26.194.161 (talk) 22:33, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed - I've tagged it as an advert as there is no balance to the article at all. If nobody is able to improve the article I think it should probably be nominated for deletion. Rthorton (talk) 10:05, 9 September 2010 (UTC).

Yeah, this is pseudoscience inserted by a snake-oil salesman for the purpose of convincing potential victims of the scam. I can't be arsed to figure out the Wikipedia procedure for nominating a thing for deletion, but this thing very much needs deletion. The "technology" might deserve a mention on some article about pseudoscience, and then making the deleted page a redirect into that section. Myself248 (talk) 00:22, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

OK, I agree. I used to think that there might be something useful in it, though it seems mostly to apply to the UK. But the one on power factor is completely wrong. Discussion of THD doesn't make much sense, either. Neutral current in three phase systems occurs from the third harmonic even in balanced systems. (It comes from non-linear loads, even balanced ones.). Do they really have these in the UK? Gah4 (talk) 01:47, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Anon IP edits

A persistent SPA anon IP wishes to add the following to the references section:

Voltage Regulators / Stabilisation

These devices will allow an increased level of saving to be achieved, particularly when there is a 24 hour high demand. The local network voltage rises at night due to general drop in demand on the network so where a fixed ratio transformer (discussed above) will also increase it's voltage output in line with the network voltage, a stabiliser will remain static at the desired output. This is best viewed in the comparative graph in this link [link redacted; seems to be spam magnet].

I've removed it three times in the last 24 hours for the following reasons:

1. It's not a reference. Maybe that was obvious? Why have headings and structure in an article at all, just drop in stuff at random.
2. It's redundant. This article, God help us, already contains this sort of description.
3. It's extremely badly written (even by the undemanding standards of Wikiprose)- anything with a slash in the title is suspect. What do you mean by "24 hour high demand" ? The sentences are only technically English, are randomly punctuated, too long and too unfocussed.
4. It promotes an external web site. 99.999% of Web sites are spam and an external link does not belong in-line with an encyclopedia article.

Most Some A few editors read edit comments and observe why their golden prose was removed, and then fix it. --Wtshymanski (talk) 16:49, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Can anyone verify that the references support what the otiginal autor claimed? Most seem to be to very old journal articles or books, not available online, or to subscription sites. I suspect that 1 and 3 are to articles written by PowerPerfector staff. 4 is a broken link. 91.50.84.97 (talk) 19:15, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Another IP just added (diff) more text and another dubious link (changing the above blockquote). I have removed that new text and the original link because if it is spam, it is not wanted here or in the article. Johnuniq (talk) 07:38, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps we should place a disambiguation line at the top saying something like: Not to be confused with Power conditioners, and Voltage regulators which are sometimes called voltage optimisers. Here is some background. The term 'voltage optimization' should rely only apply to what the electrical engineer does when he designs the wiring installation. It means making sure any voltage drops remain within the tolerances laid out in the electrical standards for that country. Also, to design the system to avoid harmonics and phase lags, etc. Voltage Regulators/stabilizers are some of the devices that can be included in the installation to help archives these ends but they do not do away with the need to get the basic design right in the first place. A proper explanation of this process requires examples and some maths, which a lot of editors find too difficult. But! In the last decade or so, companies have started calling their stabilizers by the name of Voltage optimizers as a sales and marketing gimmick. On top of that, some (but not all) attempt to trade on company manages ignorance here in the UK, by saying: because the declared voltage in the UK has been changed, then their factories are wasting power. This sales and marketing bollocks nonsense and is getting transferred here because it make VO sound simple when really better saving can, and often are, achieved for very little, just by their own engineer analysing the existing system and redesign out the faults. The Ministry of Defence of the United Kingdom has recognised the confusion their own mangers face when pressured by sales people into purchasing these stabilisers and have published a guide to help make sense of the issues. It would, I think, be a useful guide for us too. Guide to voltage optimization on the M.O.D estate. How we can avoid these misleading edits and the addition of sales and marketing material ? I don't know, other than to keep reverting. I suspect strongly too, that some editors are representatives of some of the companies that make this equipment as per the COI tag at the top. Oh the joys of trying to produce a good article in an encyclopedia that anyone can edit and vandalize. Oh, and in answer to the question asked at the start of this section, this equipment can sometimes save power in the right application. However, this belongs in Voltage regulator Power conditioner. --Aspro (talk) 18:53, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Yes, we will probably just need to keep reverting unhelpful edits. And there is sure to be a push to promote various external sites. Johnuniq (talk) 22:06, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Progress

Hi, I have tried to edit the article to add balance. However this is my first time using Wikipedia, and I probably haven't done it quite right unfortunately. Please can someone check if the web links are cited appropriately.

I would say that "power optimisation" and "power optimization" as well as "voltage optimisation" and "voltage optimization" should be included in the wikipedia, because consumers will have to make decisions about how the things work, and whether they are worth buying. Even if the concept is a bit dubious, I guess it still needs some discussion.

Also, I have cited Ohm's law as the reason why it takes the same amount of power to boil a kettle at different voltages. However, I wonder whether there is a better law than this that includes Power in watts in the equation? I think if so, it would still be derived from Ohm's law though... Can this link through to a wikipedia page? Sorry for being a bit useless with the system

Finally, I have tried to clarify that "Power optimisers" mainly work by transforming the voltage supply, and describing briefly how an electrical transformer actually works. I don't know what they use to manage power spikes, though... Can this link to the article on "power transformer" on wikipedia? I think the sentence I've added is a bit weak, but it's the best explanation that I can provide at the moment from what I've read on the topic. There seems to be a bit of a mystery on some of the product pages of these devices about how the things actually work (in my opinion).

I would suggest that in the bit of the text before the background, the idea that there is a problem of overvoltage should be edited to say that "some people believe" there is a problem of overvoltage in the UK. It would be great if we knew who they were and whether this problem relates to particular parts of the electrical supply system... But I can't work out how to edit this bit - I can't see an edit link. I'm not talking about the text in the "background", it's the text that precedes this. Leeds011 (talk) 01:47, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for working on the article. I don't feel motivated to do any editing at the moment, but the article needs work. Forums are not suitable for references (see WP:V which says that all information must be verifiable, and WP:RS which describes reliable sources). Ohm's law is not relevant (that just says that the current drops if the voltage drops, and the drops are proportional; in fact Ohm's law may often not be applicable to the scenario in this article because, for example, a cold heating element will have a low resistance and draw a lot of current initially, and the resistance will rise and the current fall, as the element becomes hotter—that is, Ohm's law does not apply as the resistance varies with temperature). It's the conservation of energy law and some other physics which says that it takes a certain amount of energy to boil a kettle ("jug" in the reference), and if the voltage is reduced the kettle will have to heat for a longer period, taking pretty much the same amount of energy and the same cost to the consumer.

FYI: As mentioned the links to the forums will have to be removed in due course, but if they were suitable, they would need to be placed inside <ref>...</ref> like the other references.

Re "optimisation" vs. "optimization": Per WP:ENGVAR, an article should be consistent in the style of spelling used, and generally keeps the style originally used when the article was created.

Re the lead (the stuff before the TOC, table of contents, see WP:LEAD): There is a tricky way to edit just the lead, but generally what people do is click "edit this page" at the very top of the article. That allows editing of everything on the page. Johnuniq (talk) 02:19, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I've too can't find the enthusiasm to work on this at the moment. I wonder if this might not be a good time (throw him in the deep end) for Leeds011 to learn how to slap some merge templates at the top of this article and that of Power conditioner and consider transferring the useful stuff from Voltage optimisation over to there. It is daft having two articles about the same thing. By that means, a business owner searching for Voltage Optimization will get automatically redirected to a proper informative article. It can say in the introduction that it included equipment described as Voltage Optimisers. Further, it can be spelt out that some unscrupulous companies are using a factoid about supposedly UK specific over-voltage problem, to take advantage of business owners ignorance about the true situation. Help:Merging provides everything one needs to know about merging. The two articles need a fresh pair of eyes.--Aspro (talk) 14:05, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

induction motors

Some years ago, there were devices to improve the efficiency of plug-in appliances with induction motors. I have some for my washer and dryer (that I bought at thrift stores), but otherwise it seems to be a forgotten idea. It seems that induction motors must be designed to run at the low end of the line voltage tolerance. At a higher voltage, the motor will generate more heat, but otherwise operate the same way. The ones I know are not transformer based, but thyristor (power semiconductor) based. They also dynamically determine the appropriate operating voltage for the given load. This requires one device for each load. There should be references for such, though I haven't looked. Gah4 (talk) 17:49, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

photoflood

I was working on a draft for an article on photoflood lamps, when I figured out that some of the values used were European. Incandescent lamps are more voltage sensitive than many devices, and photoflood lamps even more. I suspect that bulbs should be sold for 220V, 230V, and 240V, but don't actually know this. (In addition to 120V lamps in the US.). Some have rated life of 3 hours, running the filament at a higher temperature than ordinary light bulbs. Does anyone know what they actually sell in voltage optimized countries? Gah4 (talk) 07:07, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Efficiency of Voltage Optimiser

There is no mention of the efficiency of the optimiser, a finger in the air guess is that is probably won't be any better than 95% --Anon user (talk) 17:20, 9 January 2020 (UTC)