Wednesday, December 23, 2009

That’s some variation

VoltageIt isn’t just the sporadic cuts that affect our power supply here in Bigastro. The voltage can vay by quite a bit as well.

It is normal for the voltage to drop at peak times when people start cooking meals etc. In England I remember the voltage would drop when the adverts came on the television as people went to put the kettle on for a cup of tea.

My UPS that connects the power supply to my computer registers the supply voltage and warns me when the voltage falls outside the specified range. On a few occasions it has been high but more often it is low.

Yesterday it warned me that the voltage had dropped close to the 208v limit which is remarkably low for a supply of average 240v. It could explain why some residents at Villas Andrea have problems with some of their equipment including the larger air conditioning units which run off three phase electricity.

1 comment:

Pete said...

I thought Spain (along with most of mainland Europe) was a 230V country? Officially, Britain is too. There was a directive for standardised power across Europe so Britain changed to 230V +/- 10%, which means that they didn't change a damn thing and continued to generate at 240V :D