Mains power voltage drop to reduce usage?

Commander Kinsey is stupid enough to think that would actually work.

They still make up the bulk of the load that domestic consumers present to the grid.

Yes! In rural UK the main distribution is full three phase on the main lines but small villages are typically on spurs with just two live taps and earth. Farmers have been quoted insane prices to be put on 3 phase.

It's worse than that. All the time that the kettle is heating, it's losing heat to the environment. So reduce the voltage, and thus power, and it takes more energy to boil a kettleful, since more is wasted in the process.

Sylvia.

Don't be daft, most modern gear has switch mode psus and they usually have a very vvery wide range of voltages, so they can build one model for the world. Older gear, like I use for hi if etc, as they still have tactile controls will be hit most and older turntables that use the 50 hz in the uk to make them run at the right speed would be unusable. However few of these about. If the switch mode supplies are designed with the right disidisipation, I see no reason why anything from 110v ac 60 hz and 250v ac 50 hz not to be possible. I'm sure Samsung TVs can do this, or at least most of them can.

Most chargers do this and things like shavers and toothbrushes do, cos it says so on the bottom I'm told. Brian

:-D

That would have to be tested. :-)

The thing is, the rate of heat loss is proportional to the temperature.

It is not a modern house. And precisely because of that, a smart meter was very welcome. I no longer have to open them the door to read the meter.

And me would be without electricity for weeks.

Not here.

Here, an electrical water flash heater is very uncommon.

It is a hot water tank. Very common here. It heats during the night, on a clock. And as butane is cheaper, I have it disabled.

You are badly informed :-)

I have two gas hobs, two induction hobs, one independent oven, one microwave.

An induction hob uses less electricity and heats faster.

We have so much gas that we have to tell gas ships to wait for days to be unloaded while we burn some gas to make free space to get more gas :-D

LOL.

I don't have one personally, but the supply to the common areas of my block does and the supplier erroneously turned it off a couple of weeks ago. It was three days before they could be persuaded to turn it back on, so we lost the door entry system, porch and flood lights, lights in the stairways and passages - the emergency lighting failed after a few hours: before nightfall, the TV aerial distribution system and the fire brigade were ringing up the management agents complaining that the fire alarm was out of action.

A SMPS usually has a negative input impedance. As the line voltage drops, the current increases.

Right. It's inefficient to take an hour to heat a kettle to boiling.

Mandatory staggering of tea times would help.

We heat our kettle with gas. All that heat winds up in the house, which usually needs it. An open flame is a more efficient heater than a gas furnace; no heat is vented.

I'm not in a position to replace it as it came with the flat. And it's a bit of a squeeze to fit in the alcove. I can't clean the fridge part properly as the door doesn't open past 90 degrees or so I can't remove the shelves or drawer.

I tried to measure the consumption by timing the spinning wheel of the meter: I used 104W with it on and 58W with it off so I suppose the FF uses 46W or so.

It's set to 1, which is next to off, so I assume that's the minimum refrigeration.

Do you really want Big Brother telling you when you can eat? I suppose we could all eat in communal dining halls and drink Victory (ersatz) Coffee.

They could ban adverts on TV to stop everyone from switching the kettle on at the same time.

What's that, a ZX81 with a 16kB RAM pack?

LOL :-DDD

Or they could stagger the adverts on different stations :-)

There are always fuses < or breakers > - sometimes they are a little slow or sometimes the nature of the fault is such that catastrophic damage occurs regardless. I've seen the aftermath of a 500 kV ~750 MVA transformer splitting open and spilling it's guts .. poop happens. The solution for your high voltage vs low end-voltage can be complicated and expensive to resolve - involving installing in-line regulating transformers or capacitor banks .. possibly on more-than-one feeder .. John T.

Are you sure it isn't 1 primary phase ? plus neutral - which feeds center-tapped transformers that provide 2 hots + neutral to the customer. < that is the North American way >

.. which would save many millions of miles of primary conductor and insulators ... compared to 2 primary lines. John T.

Was this in the US with "pigs" in the poles ?

To my understanding the medium voltage feed is three phase open wire in delta configuration (no neutral). The "pig" is a single phase transformer with the primary connected between two phase wires in the medium voltage feed. The third phase wire is not used by this transformer, but most likely in the next pig. The secondary is center tapped with 2 x 120 V. The cent re tap is connected to neutral and ground.

Are you sure that the wire between pig secondary CT to your house neutral was broken ?

Your description sounds more like a phase wire of the open wire medium voltage feed was broken. If your pig did not use this phase, you would not observe anything strange on your low voltage side, you would have well balanced 2 x 120 V.

Note that the third wire on the medium voltage side is not neutral, but the third phase connector.