Jump to content

Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2018 December 2

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Science desk
< December 1 << Nov | December | Jan >> December 3 >
Welcome to the Wikipedia Science Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.


December 2

[edit]

Article about voltage variation?

[edit]

Would the topic be worth an article? Or is there some article already covering it? Anyway, what voltge variation can you expect when the official voltage is something like 220-240? What causes it? And what nuisances does it cause to move out of range? Doroletho (talk) 00:12, 2 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Have a look at Mains electricity and Electric power quality and also Dynamic voltage restoration. Dolphin (t) 00:58, 2 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Be careful that there are (at least!) three quite different problems encountered here: spikes, brownouts, blackouts. Spikes are short but large voltage transients - often quite high voltages. They are caused by switching transients in the network, lightning induction, and others. Brownouts are longer periods when the voltage is out of range, usually lower. They're much less trouble for modern electronic equipment than they used to be. Blackouts are a loss of all power, either seconds (the network switching) or maybe hours. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:15, 3 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]