England volts

Whats the minimum and maximum voltage you usually measure out of the wall sockets in England?

greg

Far too much... It varies massively with where you are. The legal 'minimum', is 216v, with a maximum of 254v. However the former does not include droop induced inside your building, and for both figures the keywrd is 'regularly'. If the voltage rises above 254v, once a week when a particular bit of equipment turns off, the supply company will do nothing about it (I have recorded 275v at one site). Similarly if it drops below 216 'regularly' _at the incoming connection_, the supply company is meant to make adjustments, but the interpretation of this can be hard to get enforced.

Best Wishes

Current minimum here is about 210V - which is annoying, as my UPS trips on for maybe 3 mins a day (but as it's got an hour uptime this isn't so bad.

I'm looking at some supplies. Some are 100-240 and some are 90-264. I suppose thats opperating mode, and not absolute maximums, but I'm really not sure.

greg

I would consider those values as the range of voltage over which the device will operate properly

sockets

The minimum is 0V and the maximum around 325. But it changes quite quickly....

Meindert

It also has a nasty habit of changing polarity! ;-)

It is supposed to be 230V plus or minus 10% which I believe is the European standard, i.e 217V to 253V. Before this is it was nominally 240V but no changes were made to the generating equipment after the euro standard came in on the basis the the 240V supply already kept within the Euro limits.

Ian

sockets

Officially ( by commitee harmonisation ) it's 230V ac. There's a bit of paper that says so !

In reality it's 240V still.

In practice I regularly see 252V both in the office and at home ( 20 mi apart ). I suspect this is due to the demise of manufacturing in the UK and circuits that once powered factories are now lightly loaded.

I've seen it as low as 190V many years ago on an 'overloaded circuit' ( in a factory

- we don't have many of those any more ). That's out of official tolerance though. I doubt you'll often see it below 230V these days.

Graham

I think it's actually -6% +10% IIRC. Although we do test for psu dropout at

Graham

It might well not be out of official tolerance.... You have to remember that the 'tolerance', is as the supply arrives at your property. Changes inside the property, are _your_ responsibility, not those of the supply company. If it was 216v at the incoming supply connection, the supply was still 'in spec'.

Best Wishes