Bad transformers

Where did you ever get any other idea ? It always was 240V. An EU bureacrat's pen can't change reality. And not just 'ENGLAND' either. Do you understand what the UK is ?

I've regularly seen 252V out of a UK 13A socket BTW. No industry left any more to load it down you see and everything is energy efficient these days ( not to mention the use of electricity for heating has gone out of fashion now due to cost ).

Graham

UK specification was 240V +/- 6% = 226V - 254V

Mainland Europe was 220V. Don't know specified limits but assuming it was the same as the UK, 220V +/- 6% = 207V - 233V

EU bureaucracy has decided that all Europe will henceforth be 'standardised' at 230V. However, they moved the goalposts by increasing the limits to 10% which just happens to produce:

So, one size fits all, as it were, and the nominal mains voltages stay at 220 or 240V as before ...

Terry Casey Inscribed thus:

Uh. Electric heating beats having to pay separate bills for Gas, Oil, Coal etc. Our neighbours with Gas and/or oil plus electricity pay more than I do. Overall I pay about 25 - 30% less.

Yes ! Very crafty slight of hand.

The point is that mains-powered appliances sold within the EU must tolerate the full 207V-253V range. You can't sell something which requires e.g. a 220V-nominal supply and which fails on a 240V supply.

Conversely, a member state can impose tighter restrictions on utilities, but can't impose their nominal voltage standards on the sale of generators or inverters.

ISTR that advertised power output for passive devices has to assume a

Yes, but almost all of the electrical devices in service were sold before (in some cases, many years before) the new standard was introduced. Some of this stuff will be more sensitive to voltage variations than others but I can't see any country changing their nominal mains voltage anytime soon.

Obviously, all new product must comply with the new standard which means, of course, that it will work anywhere in the EU provided, of course, that it is fitted with the correct mains plug!

A lot of electronic stuff used to be much more sensitive to voltage differences than today - perhaps the last remaining one in common use is the soon-to-be-outlawed incandescant lamp.

Ramping the voltage in mainland Europe up from 220V to 240V would hasten their demise ...

... wouldn't work so well the other way round in the UK, though! I imagine that 100W lamps run at 90W would last a very long time!