230V/240V Question

It's abundantly obvious that the only reason for deciding to call it 230V +10/-6% was to claim adherence with a new 230V "Euro" standard on paper.
No - that was how the harmonised standard was made.

But I'll tell you what is abundantly obvious - again it is your blind and unreasoning opposition to standards and to things changing.


there was absolutely no need to change it other than for usual case of "European harmonization" for the sake of it.
Oh look - there you go again.
 
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It's abundantly obvious that the only reason for deciding to call it 230V +10/-6% was to claim adherence with a new 230V "Euro" standard on paper.
No - that was how the harmonised standard was made.

Adjust the U.K. specification to conform after it was made or adjust the U.K. specification as an integral part of developing the new standard, it doesn't change the fact that the U.K. specification was changed in order to call it 230V for the sake of "harmonization," which as you yourself have pointed out was unnecessary since it's only a nominal voltage.

But I'll tell you what is abundantly obvious - again it is your blind and unreasoning opposition to standards and to things changing.
There's nothing wrong with changing a standard or developing a new one if there is a specific need to do so. What I'm against is changing for the sake of change when there is no technical need for the change.
 
Adjust the U.K. specification to conform after it was made or adjust the U.K. specification as an integral part of developing the new standard, it doesn't change the fact that the U.K. specification was changed in order to call it 230V for the sake of "harmonization," which as you yourself have pointed out was unnecessary since it's only a nominal voltage.
Unnecessary? o_O

That is what harmonisation is all about!

To say it was unnecessary and only done for the sake of harmonisation is to completely miss the point that it was absolutely necessary for there to be harmonisation.


There's nothing wrong with changing a standard or developing a new one if there is a specific need to do so.
There was a need.

A need for harmonisation.


What I'm against is changing for the sake of change when there is no technical need for the change.
It was not change for its own sake.

It was change for the sake of harmonisation.

How can you possibly have a harmonised voltage range unless some of them are changed?
 
There was no technical reason for harmonizing the time throughout Britain but it made things easier to have it the same throughout the country.

It didn't alter the Sun - although here it now rises and sets at a later time than it should.
Good grief we even have noon at 7½min. past 12 (1 in the Summer).

Where does Winston live? He must be distraught.

Edit - Oh. had a look, he lives in London. That's ok then.
 
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To say it was unnecessary and only done for the sake of harmonisation is to completely miss the point that it was absolutely necessary for there to be harmonisation.
No, that is the point: It was done for no better reason than to be able to say "Look, we now have 230V nominal right across Britain, Ireland & Europe" (or those parts of Europe which joined in). And that conveniently ignores the fact that 230V +10/-6% is not quite the same as 230V +/-6% which is not quite the same as 230V -10/+6% etc.

There was no technical reason for harmonizing the time throughout Britain but it made things easier to have it the same throughout the country.
That was done for very practical reasons as communications & travel started to become easier, prompted initially by the railways to avoid the confusion of every station on the line keeping its own local solar time which was slightly different from every other station. On the other hand, the bi-annual messing around with the clocks for British Summer Time (or Daylight Saving Time, or whatever else it may be called in various parts of the world) which generally was adopted around the time of World War I serves no useful purpose whatsoever and should have been scrapped a long time ago for the added confusion it causes.
 
No, that is the point: It was done for no better reason than to be able to say "Look, we now have 230V nominal right across Britain, Ireland & Europe" (or those parts of Europe which joined in). And that conveniently ignores the fact that 230V +10/-6% is not quite the same as 230V +/-6% which is not quite the same as 230V -10/+6% etc.
Let's say you were designing a world from scratch, e.g. some kind of infrastructure design role for a mission settling a planet somewhere.

Would you think it a good thing to have every country use the same voltage and frequency, or would you think it better for different places to have different ones, on a fairly arbitrary basis?
 
There was no technical reason for harmonizing the time throughout Britain but it made things easier to have it the same throughout the country.
That was done for very practical reasons
Precisely - practical rather than technical reasons - the same with harmonization so that everyone is the same.

On the other hand, the bi-annual messing around with the clocks for British Summer Time (or Daylight Saving Time, or whatever else it may be called in various parts of the world) which generally was adopted around the time of World War I serves no useful purpose whatsoever and should have been scrapped a long time ago for the added confusion it causes.
I would agree with that.

A major part of Europe is on permanent (+1 hour) daylight saving time and extra (+2 hours) dst in the Summer.
Britain cannot or will not do that because it would upset the North and Scotland.
I would prefer it because I don't like mornings.
 
I've yet to see any of the following:

  1. A sensible explanation of how changing where the hands point on a dial changes how much daylight there actually is.
  2. A sensible explanation of how where the hands point on a dial changes when farmers need to get up wrt sunrise.
  3. A sensible explanation of how the peoples of Sweden, Norway and Finland manage to hold down jobs, and run businesses and schools.
 
A major part of Europe is on permanent (+1 hour) daylight saving time
No it isn't. It's on the technically arbitrary "time" that makes the most sense for where they are and when the Sun rises and sets.

And if they are right, we are wrong.

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Let's say you were designing a world from scratch, e.g. some kind of infrastructure design role for a mission settling a planet somewhere.

Would you think it a good thing to have every country use the same voltage and frequency, or would you think it better for different places to have different ones, on a fairly arbitrary basis?
Obviously if we could start from scratch it would be nice to have a single, standard system. But that's not what history has left us with. Designing new appliances to work over the whole range of 220-240V nominal systems is one thing, but that's not a good reason for the specification change adopted in the U.K. just to be able to say "Look, we're on the new 230V standard now." It took decades for Britain to standardize on 240V +/-6% at 50Hz from all the earlier systems which were in use in different areas.

Have you also considered why, if an asymmetric tolerance about the nominal declared voltage was to be considered acceptable, they opted for 230V +10/-6% instead of 230V +10/-2% in order to keep the existing permissible range in Britain? Should they wish to, the new specification will allow the DNO's to adopt operational practices which could sometimes result in the supply voltage being well outside the old 240V -6% limit. So while worrying about making new appliances suitable for use across Europe, how about older ones which, if the DNO's decided to make use of the extra tolerance, could then experience problems?
 
No it isn't. It's on the technically arbitrary "time" that makes the most sense for where they are and when the Sun rises and sets.

And if they are right, we are wrong.
Based upon the natural 15-degrees longitude for each time zone, France and Spain are clearly in the wrong. The 7.5-degrees east line runs roughly from the Dutch-German border down to the French-Italian border, meaning that the natural time zone for France, Spain, Belgium, and The Netherlands) is GMT. In fact the farthest western parts of Spain (and even the very northwestern tip of Brittany) naturally fall into the GMT-1 hr. zone (although obviously for countries this relatively small it makes sense to keep the whole country on the same time).

I'm not sure of the history for Spain, but I know for France the country did adopt GMT back in the 19th century after the time zones were defined (it had previously operated on local Paris time, about 9 minutes ahead of London). It was the German occupation during World War I which caused France to move ahead an hour, and for some reason they never reverted back at the end of the war.
 
On the other hand, the bi-annual messing around with the clocks for British Summer Time (or Daylight Saving Time, or whatever else it may be called in various parts of the world) which generally was adopted around the time of World War I serves no useful purpose whatsoever and should have been scrapped a long time ago for the added confusion it causes.
I couldn't agree more.
Why on earth is this nonsense still being done?
 
One of our neighboring states, Arizona, has the right idea and leaves the clocks on the same time year round (except, for some reason, within the Navajo Indian Reservation), as does Hawaii. Much of Indiana never used DST until recently either, but Indiana was very complicated for other reasons.
 
Obviously if we could start from scratch it would be nice to have a single, standard system.
Then we can stop there. Harmonisation is a good thing.


But that's not what history has left us with.
So we change what we have been left with.

That's the way it works.

Get over it.


It took decades for Britain to standardize on 240V +/-6% at 50Hz from all the earlier systems which were in use in different areas.
We would still have all those earlier systems if things never changed.

That's the way it works.

Get over it.


Have you also considered why, if an asymmetric tolerance about the nominal declared voltage was to be considered acceptable, they opted for 230V +10/-6% instead of 230V +10/-2% in order to keep the existing permissible range in Britain?
The plan was that voltage levels across Europe should be unified at 230V single phase and 400V ±10%. Those countries with a nominal voltage of 240V (like the UK) were obliged to move to 230V +10% -6%, and those on 220V moved to 230V +6% -10%.


So while worrying about making new appliances suitable for use across Europe, how about older ones which, if the DNO's decided to make use of the extra tolerance, could then experience problems?
As you observed, it can take decades. Maybe the issue of older appliances is what has delayed the full implementation of HD472.

But it will never happen if it is never started.

That's the way it works.

Get over it.
 

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