Mishalak

It's extremely rare for the ability to draw that much power to be an issue. I can see it being desirable for some kitchen appliances, and I guess for hair dryers.

Meanwhile, the large, heavy plugs and cords forced on the 220V users are a lot of trouble, and would interfere with our habit of casually plugging in a power bar to prove 6 more outlets where needed.

I think we've got a better system -- standards for 220 where needed, rarely used, and nice lightweight convenient 110V for most things.

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vicarage.livejournal.com

Isn't daisy-chaining harder with 110V than with 220? Certainly I'd put 10 items on power blocks in the UK, with the exception of heaters, but I'd be more wary in the US.

Being brought up with UK 3 pin system it always seemed the safest with the earth pushing the live/neutral gates open. US dual pins always seemed flimsy, and the retrofitting of earths too easily circumvented with adapter plugs.

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Lots of things draw less than one amp at 120V these days, so I have some pretty high fan-outs in locations where I'm running all my chargers, or piles of computer accessories, or such. I know that's very easy and convenient in the US system (I live in the US).

I'm not as familiar with how people do that in the UK or other systems, but the basic plugs are sure big and clunky, it looks like the things I take for granted would be 2x or more bigger physically just because of that. (While I've spent cumulative months in the UK, I've never lived there. I did live in Switzerland two years, but the most recent was 1967 and I didn't have all that much I needed to plug in then!)

Grounded receptacles aren't much of a safety improvement really; for places where it's an issue GFCI's are now required, and with those in place the grounding is irrelevant (almost another source of problems, in fact).

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pompe.livejournal.com

I'm not sure where in Europe you've been, but I use 6-outlet extensions and 8-outlet power bar extensions all the time. Every office and school I've seen uses them as well. IKEA sells them in piles...

The plugs here (Sweden) are often 2-pronged Europlug thingies for smaller appliances like most computer devices and chargers. I don't remember the plugs in Canada being notably smaller. However the larger safety versions are indeed rather big, but I kind of like the sturdiness of them. (Memories of army days, I assume)

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Only the UK at all recently (pretty much everywhere, in the 1960s, but that's long enough I wouldn't trust even detailed memories to *still* be accurate).

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vicarage.livejournal.com

It works much the same, though you get many more transfomers built into plugs both because of the extra space and the ability to bear higher loads, as the 3 pins are a strong, tight fit. I lived in Colorado for 2 years, and felt those 2 thin pins always looked suseptible to being knocked out of a wall socket.

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thorkell.livejournal.com

Large heavy plugs and cords? The ones I've seen are roughly the same size.

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The ones I've seen, as recently as 1994, are MUCH bigger and heavier than our normal cords and plugs.

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I'm mostly thinking of kitchen appliances when I talk about the drawbacks. Electric kettles, refrigerators, and the like. Though I suppose vacuum cleaners also draw enough amps that a higher voltage would be useful.

Mostly I understand that higher voltage is useful for the thinner conductors it can use, but I lust after the quick heat up time and efficiency of an electric kettle using 220. Silly, but then that's this whole post all over.

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The electric kettle is very definitely one of the clear-cut cases where the ability to draw that much power (220V at 13A is common I believe) would be useful.

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don-fitch.livejournal.com

While we're re-wiring the house, we might as well add a set of wires for a 12-volt DC system, powered by photocells on the roof, to operate/charge some electronic equipment and to operate a LED illumination system (with a combination of colored diodes, please, to avoid the blue-white glare of the most economical one).

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Tempting in some ways, certainly. I could run my computers off that, too -- you can buy standard replacement power supplies that take 12VDC instead of 120VAC.

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Interestingly most computers are made to a sort of international standard. Their internal power supplies are meant to work with a range of voltages and cycles per minute so you can just replace the connector cable on the back and otherwise ship the same unit to almost any country.

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I'm not sure if the the efficiency of not stepping up and making it AC only to covert it back to DC and step it down later would overcome the inefficiency of the lower voltage and having to transmit DC power over however many feet. 12V DC power has really, really crappy line losses due to the low voltage involved.

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Agreed, but 48V DC is a happy medium.

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When I rewire the house (an eventual actuality, not hypothetical talk) all of the lighting stuff will be on separate circuits, to give maximum flexibility for illumination in a post-incandescent world. Oh, and after last week's blackout (and during a severe cold snap, to boot), I've been thinking of ways to stay illuminated and warm when the grid goes away. There are approaches afoot which are better than big, stinky, expensive, and noisy generators.

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Uh, first off: how does using 120V (the present day American standard, NOT 110V) make a power consuming device less efficient?

Second, I agree with everything DDB said.

Oh, and regarding "at least one industrialized nation that does the same, South Korea." Um, really? Canada doesn't count? Mexico? Saudi Arabia? Taiwan?

Finally, regarding running low voltage power, don't forget that power is the product of current and voltage. If you're going to run a modern electric household on one-tenth the voltage, you're going to need ten times the current. The wiring will need to be commensurately larger. Priced copper lately (http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/base/lme-warehouse-copper-5y-Large.gif)?

Inexpensive CFLs are still more efficient in lumens-per-watt than all but the most expensive LED area lighting retrofit products. If you're worried about the mercury in CFLs, keep in mind two factoids:

1) the semiconductor industry that produces LEDs (and every other device with a P-N junction - ALL semiconductors, including solar cells, cell phones, anything electronic) produces a great deal of toxic waste.

2) the triple-distilled pure metallic mercury used in CFLs is far less bioavailable (ie; toxic) than the ore it is made from, or any number of nasty mercury compounds (such as the very common mercury chloride or the incredibly nasty dimethyl mercury) which result from many industrial processes. You can DRINK metallic mercury without incurring toxic effects.

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Sorry, I was unclear. South Korea uses 60Hz and 220V, unlike almost everywhere else. Very few nations use that combination, though Taiwan uses a sort of duel standard of having some outlets wired for 220V and others for 110V, both at 60Hz.

I meant that the vast majority of other nations use either our system of 120V (though actually ranging in local conditions anywhere from 110V-127V) and 60Hz or else the "European" quasi standard of being 220V-240V and 50Hz.

There are all sorts of variations in some localities though. Brazil apparently has no standard and Madagascar has for a long time used a standard of 127V and 50Hz, but is transitioning to 220V very, very slowly.

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Yeah, it basically depends on whether it was the British Empire or America who electrified their country.

Standards are gelling, but because it was so convenient to use the (surprisingly stable, most of the time) line frequency for various useful things like synching television signals, a great deal now depends on the frequency staying where it is within each country.

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There's also the fact that small and cheap AC motors are synchronous to the line frequency.

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True, although applications which require true synchronous operation (no slip) are getting rare. Quasi-synchronous squirrel cage motors which slip are very common and will just run 27% slower on 50Hz. Only a very old and low-end turntable will have a synchronous motor in it. Newer / better ones will have fancier drives. Hmm, I wonder how many remaining applications there are...
(just out of curiosity)

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In regards to your other points, I agree and disagree on compact florescent lights. I suspect that overall they're good overall on mercury grounds alone due the amount of mercury that coal fired power plants are allowed to emit in the US.

You are quite correct that metallic mercury is not as dangerous as the ore it comes from, but I don't bring that ore into my home unlike CFLs. Plus from my own peculiar point of view I'd rather have LEDs at least in rooms with artwork and books due to the lower levels of UV compared with florescent lighting. Putting a book under a florescent light isn't bad, especially compared with direct sunlight, but it isn't good either. The technology has a long way to go, but I lust after it. As soon as I can afford it I'll use all LED lighting in my book room, though for the rest I'll wait until it becomes sensible.

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"...but I don't bring that ore into my home unlike CFLs."

So, could you clarify for me the reasoning behind your apparent objection to CFLs? Because the above seems a bit like a combination of a red herring and a straw man, and I'm not getting the connection to the discussion at hand. Maybe I'm just tired.

LEDs are getting better and better, but they aren't ready for reducing energy consumption by the masses right now. I am more interested in what Joe Sixpack can afford to do to reduce energy consumption right now.

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I conserve electricity expended on lighting by keeping the lights turned off except when I'm in the room, with the exceptions of the front hall (when I'm home and awake) and the front porch (ditto).

As for the toxic-waste aspect of LEDs, I think it's a case of the pot calling the kettle black, given the less than stellar environmental controls where the CCFLs are made.

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I'm very anal retentive about turning off lights the moment I leave a room. Drives my wife nuts. ^_^

Pot kettle black was basically the point I was trying to make: that there are no magic, totally green environmental power solutions made by elves and unicorns where the process waste stream consists of rainbows and rose oil.

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I mean that the toxicity of the ore that the mercury comes from does not matter to me, because you mentioned it. I felt like that was a bit of a red herring because no one I know has any reason to have cinnabar in his home.

Think of me as being the sort of person that objects to everything and then goes with the least objectionable option. In my view that is using florescent bulbs since the last time I read something on the subject five time as much mercury ends up in the air from burning coal as from manufacturing. But I go into this with my eyes open to the problems they'll cause as long as we use them and keep wanting to use something even better.

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