Running 115v device on 230v

I think it is a common method and is even used in a commercial adapter. Only good for resistive loads such as heaters and incandescent lamps, of course. Just be sure the diode is hefty enough and adequately cooled. If it shorts then your heater may light up pretty good.

Don Young

message

should

problems

Well Jim, that is really what the diode is doing - as I see it, only the (say) positive excursions will pass through so that the average voltage will be 230/2 = 115 so the power will be the same as designed, but that vision has been querried by Barry in his posting above - I would welcome others to comment !

AWEM

Is it a question of whetehr the 'area under the graph' of half-wave

240V is equivalent to full wave 110V? It's all too long ago for me, & I was never all that good on the maths, I thinkt you are much more up to speed than me on these things Andrew?

Cheers Tim

Dutton Dry-Dock Traditional & Modern canal craft repairs Vintage diesel engine service

That would work. But, as someone else said, what does your electricity-supplier say? I guess, they don't like it. OTOH, who cares? Maybe by having a look inside, you find out that you could rewire it for

230V. Or add a second heater in series. This is gonna be a cold winter! ;-)

Nick

The area under the graph of half a 240V sine wave is roughly (110/(240/2)) the same as the 110V, but power as Barry pointed out is given by P = V^2 / R, so with R being unchanged, the power dissipated in half the 240V cycle is still twice that in the full 110V cycle.

The cheapest way to do this is with a thyristor, which is like a diode, but needs a voltage applied to make it open. Using one of these you can set a bias voltage so that instead of taking one complete half of the

240V cycle, you can have it switch on and off at the voltage you choose.

240V AC actually has a peak voltage around 340V (depending if your 240 is really 240), so that the average power supplied to a resistive load is equivalent to a 240V DC supply. If you bias the thermistor to around

320V you will get about the power you need as obviously the bit at the top of the wave gives a lot more power per second than the lower voltage parts of the cycle.

Your heater is around 8-9 ohms, so the peak current the thermistor would need to support would be 42 Amps and I have seen surplus stock in the past with 50 Amp+ ratings going for a couple of quid each.

Looking at all the options and answers, I'd go for a 240/115 auto-transformer, as long as you don't need isolation. That would be much smaller than a full isolation tranny and you could possibly use the primary side of an existing transformer if it had the right values/taps.

Pretty sure we haven't anything that size at the factory, but I'll have a look tomorrow.

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes Email: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Web:

SNIP

Power is V squared over R so your 1.5KW resistor would dissipate

6KW if supplied with 230V. The 50% duty cycle provided by a diode would only reduce this to 3KW average which is still 100% overload.

As Baz points out, a phase controlled triac dimmer is the way to go.

Jim

... snipped

... snipped

There's a slightly important typo here - a regular thyristor latches on when a voltage is applied to the gate and switches off when the load current reduces below the holding current. It's effectively a diode that can be switched-on. To complete the picture ... a Triac is effectively two thyristors wired back-to-back and therefore works in both directions; a GTO Thyristor can be switched-off by the gate but are slightly specialist devices.

Now back to the original question. As you spotted, the simplest solution for a purely resistive load is to use a diode, but it will obviously cause an asymmetric load on the supply. To overcome this you could buy a dimmer (generally Triac-based) and adjust the conduction phase angle (otherwise known as turning the knob!) until you get the power you want. They're pretty simple to build if you feel like it, but you should add some EM filtering.

Dave

ISTR that in the garage I have a couple of 1500VA 240/115V auto transformers. they are relativly small toroidal ones, Ill check when I go out later, but I can certainly spare one if its of use.

Dave

1) How limited are you for space? 2) What is special about the heater (240 1kW open or quartz elements are less than a tenner)

As Barry and co have said. A rectifier will still give double the output and will increase the tendency of the substation transformer to saturation.

Saturation may not be a major problem, since you would only be drawing about

13A from a substation transformer that is probably rated at 2400A (for a 1MVA tranny). But It is still going to be too hot :-(

I don't suppose you've got two elements you could wire in series, do you?

I _do_ have a 5kVA 240/110 isolating transformer that I'm not using at the moment, and have access to another, similar sized one but they are a bit solid.

Mark Rand RTFM

auto-transformer,

later,

....ooooh ! Christmas comes early ?

AWEM

Comment is that you need the square root of the average of the square or the voltage. Not the average of the voltage.

This being because the instantaneous power is proportional to the square of the instantaneous voltage.

This is because power is Volts times Amps and the Amps are Volts divided by ohms

Thus instantaneous power is V^2/R

Hay grandma, I can show you how to suck eggs

Mark Rand RTFM

running

saturation.

drawing about

Mark,

The special bit is that it screws into the sump of that rather large genny engine that you saw the other month and turns the treacle in the sump back into oil when the frost is on the brussel sprouts ! The control cabinet has run out of wall space to put anything bigger than a small pack of kippers sideways. I do actually have two elements that I can wire in series but that means tapping another hole in the sump which I'd like to avoid, also 3KW of oomph is rather a lot even in the

30 pints of oil in the beast.(It's supposed to drive the furnace not be the furnace

AWEM

Its Bl**dy freezing out there, Im going to puzzle some Weff. anyway the details are: in 230V out 120V (perhaps a bit much?)

2000VA 6 1/2" diameter 2 1/2" tall, quite heavy. 3 leads. made by Ulveco USA txfmr number 23339

Dave

smaller

Dave, I reckon I could mount that nicely on the inside roof of the cabinet if you could spare it? Where are you?

Regards,

AWEM

Its spare, I have 4 of them... Im a couple of mins from J23 M1

Dave

Aha! Now we see the problem. If it's any consolation, the old man's Landrover had a 3kW sump heater. Downside of that was that most Scandinavian hotels only have 6A supplies for block heaters in their car parks, so he tended to be unpopular with them.

How about a 555 timer and a triac to give the heater .5 seconds on, two seconds off? There should be enough thermal inertia in the element that it would cope with that easily. That would give you just a bit under 1.5kW and could be adjusted to suit.

You could just leave the engine ticking over from now until next April

Mark Rand RTFM