yes you can have that simpler. But if you design that as an emergency floor light you need them running for ever. If they are broken you would need to get a electrician to replace them. It's a lot cheaper to buy error proof led light. And early leds being what they where that was a smart design.
A quit easy way to describe reactive, apparent and active power is this: Active power is the power which is being converted in the device into mechanical/thermical/illuminating/... power. It's the one that makes your (classic) meter turn. Reactive power is the power, which is temporaly stored in any magnetic oder electric field of a device, each halv-wave it will be pulled from the distributor an then pushed back again, it appears when capacitators or inductances are connected to AC. Reactive power is commuting like a pendulum between the power distributor and the device, it will not do any work but it stresses the power lines. Apparant power is the vectorial sum of active and reactive power and equals effective current multiplied by eff. voltage. (Sry for my bad english, i am german and the last english lesson is 28 years ago)
Good explanation about a subject which I've never quite understood. I wish I had taken more notice of my German lessons many many years ago so I could at least thank you in your own language! Danke schone!! :-)
Because I've never seen him wearing Lipstick...I'm talking about his videos, not about what he is doing in his day to day life...And I'm 99% certain that he does not wear lipstick ever...
LOL. As an electrical engineer for a power company, I have mixed feelings about this. We do have to provide capacity to serve the apparent power. Since power factor is non-linear, it has to be pretty bad before we start to care...say, about 80%. On certain rates, we will measure VAR's as well. For homes, it really hasn't mattered historically because most of the loads had good power factors with resistance lamps, heating, and induction motors. However, now that we are starting to see the LED lighting with sh!t power factors, we are beginning to take some notice. But, the precedent is set, so I can understand the angst....and I do pay a full electric bill as well. :)
The real way to deal with that would be to mandate a good power factor on anything sold in the country for domestic use. Large customers, historically the only ones charged for power factor, would have the nous to install active PFC gear. Your householder, notsomuch. But yes, I too can see the power company's side, especially with all the electronic stuff showing up. Interestingly I wonder if the mix of inductive stuff (motor loads like ceiling fans and extractor fans) and capacitive droppers... doesn't actually result in a fairly decent conventional power factor for the installation, but even then, PCs and smps's would mess up the waveform shape horribly
AFAIK, wattless units are very cheap. I know a few places that demand a PF of at least 0.95 to avoid penalties. I doubt they can charge domestic customers as there is no other phase for the meter to reference to.
haddockman30 As the hopi meter in the video demonstrated, measuring power factor on a single phase is trivial and needs no external reference. Measuring actual power was always the hard part.
haddockman30 I think the minimum power factor clause (on a full installation / whole house basis) is also in my home supply terms since before I was born. So problem is not plugging in too many capacitive or inductive loads (net, they cancel out). But as long as the heavier loads are close to 1.00, they should drown out occasional capacitive loads. Fortunately larger SMPS like in computers do include PFC circuits already.
Do note that even if they charge for apparent power, you won't be charged for the full reactive power of the LEDs unless you only have these LEDs running. The relation is (apparent power)^2 = (real power)^2 + (reactive power)^2, the reactive power makes less difference if there's more real power being used. Also the capacitive LED loads might even compensate slightly for inductive loads like your fridge. I wouldn't draw any conclusions without measuring it.
Does the same job as the metal oxide varistors they fitted across tungsten filament fairy lamps. If the filament goes open then the varistor goes short allowing the rest of the lamps to stay on. If an LED goes open then the zener will conduct but will drop a few volts.
11:17 - According to the date in the manual, this type of light was introduced in 2011. A 1998 light probably wouldn’t use white LEDs, as they were very expensive then and not popular until the middle of the 2000s. This light is, by the way, still sold for around 50 Euros (overpriced IMHO, even for ’German engineering’).
You can call any German electrical products overprized. Nevertheless, there are still people and companies to pay the ’little extra’ for German products, and so companies like Gira can exist.
It depends on the product. Whereas components like circuit breakers, RCDs etc. are reasonably priced (due to the highly automated assembly and no need for big advertising), this doesn’t apply in my opinion for example for most kitchen and household appliances by Siemens/Bosch (consolidated company branch). The more a product is advertised for private consumers, the more you pay for ’hot air’, as with fancy flickery night lights. And hot air is very expensive here in Germany ;-).
This was one of your most valueable videos for me - right now on the spot. Yesterday I searched for a simple, yet clever current regulation, I guess I found my solution. This is easily scalable to my needs.
If the supply authorities DO start charging for apparent power, then we can expect the LED lighting companies to fit power factor correction components - just as we currently see in traditional fluorescent ceiling fittings. Then, we'll see enterprising Chinese suppliers producing power factor correction "add-on" circuitry for existing LED luminaires!
Scho-Ka-Kola might have been around in WW2, but the pilots also got "Panzerschokolade" which was actually _Crystal Meth_. So be careful if you ever decide to order the "stuff that was fed to the WW2 pilots" :-D It might get you into trouble. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine#History,_society,_and_culture
I wonder if there will be some lighting standard in the future where there will be DC power supplies running each lighting circuit. With a dedicated power supply, it can take care of the power factor correction, rectification, smoothing, etc. which would simplify LED lamps, i.e. they would need to do little other than buck / boost the voltage for the LEDs, much like 12V lighting circuits. This would in theory do away with the issue of stroboscopic and low power factor LEDs as the main DC power supply would take care of the smoothing and power factor correction.
In fact there would be no need to boost the voltage since each LED requires only about 3 volts so they can be connected in parallel or series-parallel. In my house I ran a 12 volt line to feed a number of 12v LED strip lights. What I failed to account for was the current required and I used only 3 Amp twin flex!
Manolis Gledsodakis That's the reason I would use 24v or 48v. It's still low voltage, but can handle much more power. You can upgrade yours to 24. There is a lot of voltage drop at 12v DC over thin wire.
Frank Gormanns Might as well go 48V like in telecoms. Anyway any efficient LED circuit running from a DC supply will need a switching regulator to convert back to AC to avoid wasting real power in a hot dropper of some kind. An AC to DC converter for a single lighting circuit can be an almost pure current supply feeding a series circuit.
Done that in our (and the neighbours) RV: ALL interior lighting is 12v d.c. LED.. We used the very reliable off-the-shelf 12v rated cable for garden lighting - really cheap, and very low volt drop, even on longish runs. Also we copied the UK Ring-Main approach - the lighting circuits are all double-fed, and all the regulation components were via our friendly Chinese suppliers - reliable, simple to repair (should they fail), and cheap enough to hold supplies of spare modules "just in case".
That smart meter thing got me two years ago. I had a large fan which got "dimmed" with a triac dimmer. I caused a terible power factor and we got charged like crazy! Last year I got a nice Variac and our "power consumption" went down a lot. Well what do we learn from that, always check your PF if you have a "smart" meter installed.
I never left incandescent, they have a much more predictable lifetime and better quality light output, as well as being non-directional. Incandescent has only one point of failure, yet with LED, CCFL, you have say 20+ components in the circuit, all of which can be a point of failure, and you never know if the thing is going to last past the first month.
Leif Neland ...they text me a reminders for me to read my meters and I text back the readings quarterly..they read my meter once a year..they average out my usage and we agree on a monthly payment...
Mozart Balls, picked up loads when I went to Austria but they didn't survive very long outside of Austria as they are very nice! Mind you, Salzburg in Austria has a market full of Mozart balls and the best testing Pretzals in the world!
Had marzipan. Don't care for it, and marzipan candies are rather rare here. We don't have bakeries and confectioners on every other corner. Lucky to find one at all in anything less than a city of 200,000. Thus we are usually limited to what the massive companies make, and they are typically lowest common denominator.
thehappylittlefox aka benji I'm not sure I follow. Cake mix? A typically very light, sweet, and flavored bread. Flour, sugar, eggs, butter or such, baking powder, and milk or such. Anything else is optional. Fruits, chocolate, ice cream, or even nuts.
The problem with low power factors isn't so much the requirement for thicker lines. After all, the power distribution system we have was set up in the old days when we all had filament lamps (non-lighting loads take significantly more current anyway), so they're already up to the job and factored in to the power costs. The problem is that resistive power losses in the lines are proportional to the square of the current: I²R. Industrial users with motors (inductive loads) are already charged extra, and have been for a long time. These capacitive dropper lamps are now common enough that they're causing problems too. Well, they're causing problems at the local level. At the national grid level they're compensating for inductive loads and bringing down the losses on the national grid. If the power companies charge for apparent power that will be a real rip-off. What they should charge for is the resistive losses in the lines. Naturally, they'll try to charge for apparent power until there's enough backlash that they charge for line losses instead.
Aldi sell Toffifee in Australia, I too have had to stop buying them for myself as they tend not to last very long after getting home from the shop, then I feel a bit sick. 🤒
If you used a dropper made of a resonant circut with a capacitor and an inductor, the resonant frequency being 50Hz, could you get a power factor of 1?
Technically yes when XL = XC (inductive and capacitative reactance) but the reactances cancel each other out so there isn't anything limiting the current resulting in all the smoke escaping.
My shop is 3P. My utility company sent an engineer to help me create the best PF through load diversity. An 800 A 3P shop in a residential area was a problem for them. But they paid the bill to make it efficient. Their not all $ grubbing pigs.
I just googled this and you are correct. O.o If I'd seen a picture of that candy anywhere without knowing of this, I would have assumed some kind of eastern european knock off of Toffifee. Heh.
5:11 This is kind of the reality in the Netherlands, government forced the power network maintainers to install smart meters in all homes before 2021. A couple of years ago a batch of smart meters was set to measure apparent power. They ended up replacing them but I don't think it was a mistake, just a test to see if people would notice.
I have no idea about what most of the components on the circuit actually do but i still watch these videos anyway in an attempt to learn something new.
That would be fairly new and shocking to me that you will be charged for apparent power as a household consumer. And even if: 10 VAh will not be the same as 10Wh because that is not Energy that gets used and only oscillates betwee producer and consumer. I work at a big industrial company in germany as an electrician and of course we get charged for VAhs but not nearly as much. This extra cost is onyl there to cover the additional expenses that occur when having higher current like bigger cables, more losses on the cable and all that. Thats why we compensate most of it as the main loads are big motors
davbj1 The capacitators in a fridge's compressor are needed to create rotating magnetic field, not for phase shifting.Without them, the compressor will just make a nice humming noise while getting hot an hotter.
there are 2 caps to increase the volt tolerance. adding them in series doesnt increase the capacity, but doubles the voltage rating to 500V, which is needed because the max voltage difference between two 90degree shifted sine waves is ✓2 times the individual amplitudes. so in this case about 350V(minus ca. 20V for the leds), which would be too much for a single 250V cap. i guess... ^^
Alex Trinker - You're in no way wrong but I think the reason it's strange is just because they didn't use a capacitor rated at 400V or higher in the first place...
Normally you use a single capacitor that just has the voltage rating you want. Nothing difficult about that. I suspect they are doing this because they may also make a version that runs on 110V. Then they only need to use a different PCB, but the same components.
I used to love Mozart's Balls! I'd bring loads back from Berlin whilst on holiday. Unfortunately I'm Diabetic now (probably due to eating so many Mozart's Balls).
In some other video's comments someone complained about reliability of LED filament lamps (Because of voltage peaks? I'm running those lamps w/o problems). However now I want to see a filament LED lamp with zeners in parallel. Those would be efficient and nice looking, have a good power factor _and_ they would be very reliable.
Wow! That was very nice to listen to. I didn't understand a thing he said. Only at the end I could understand that he liked the sweets and that dam light.
Well I have to say I can understand the point of the power companies to compensate for the higher and higher ammount of devices with terrible power factors, this was not so bad in the past but now private households are drifting further and further into lower power factors which costs the power companies more money but the private households less.
It´s not that bad. Firstly, most major SMPS nowadays have APFC, so they are not a problem. Secondly, all LED lamps above a certain power will use a SMPS instead of a capacitive dropper because the capacitor would be too big and expensive. They also have a better PF than a capacitive dropper.
Yes bigger SMPS might have active PFC but when I look at all my equipment I think my PC's PSU is the only one with PFC. I'm no expert in power distribution and all that but I think this is more and more a problem than in the past.
APFC is not very common yet in small consumer SMPS, but I expect they will become more common in the future no matter what. There are more and more SMPS controller ICs that do APFC and all the other switch-mode action in one device, and even full on SMPS regulators (aka the IC includes all the switches, only caps and inductors/transformers are external). Industrial SMPS usually have APFC no matter how big they are already.
FesixGermany Tell me, what is the rating of the most powerful electrical item in your house? And how does this compare to your electronic items that have a bad power factor?
What I'm trying to say is that it adds up, yes my oven or my washing machine might be way more powerful but these resistive loads always existed, incendescent bulbs are replaced by LEDs with bad power factor supplies, yes the LEDs are drawing less power but what about the apparent power? Maybe I'm missing the point, just my thoughts.
The modern rotating disc panel meters also measure rms current and rms voltage (i.e. power factor isnt taken into consideration..). Only reason I know is that Clive mentioned these panel meters measure real power only and I remember having a bank of fairly high value AC caps plugged in and the disc spun faster than if an oven is on...
I hope you explain more on how to fix power factor. sneaky Smart metres, that explains what happens now in Egypt all who get new metres are complaining that they pay more without knowing what is that for or what is happening .. thanks a lot for pointing to that.
Yes, Toffifee are available here in the US, although for some reason they are called "Toffifay" instead. I have only started seeing them relatively recently, though, so they may be somewhat new over here.
Thanks for putting the food stuff to the end of the video so I (and other people bothered by these noises) can skip it :) I really like your videos a lot!
I got to use a multimeter for the very first time yesterday, poking the probey bits directly onto the terminals in an exposed wall socket. It was thrilling! And between this channel and ElectroBOOM, I had at least some idea what was going on and what he was talking about. :)
Toffifee is absolutely available in Canada, mostly around Canadian thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter since they're the big feast holidays, but you can find it year round in some stores. Super sticky toffee in the teeth, though.
Many smart metres don't work anyway. If you switch the company you buy electricity from usually the old smart meter doesn't work. Also the original smart metres don't tell you what the instantaneous usage is, so they're no use for monitoring hourly use and hence trying to reduce your consumption.
regarding the input circuity: it is good design practice (in many cases mandatory, even though it is often abandoned for cost-saving reasons) to go through your circuit and imagine a short and an open fault condition for every individual component, then evaluate the potential dangers and address safety issues (single-fault condition). if i remember correctly, IEC 60950 should cover the details.
fortunately I opted for a smart meter without remote control functionality when they said my old meter had to go. The meter man still has to visit my house :)
Clive, not to be nit-picky but at 6.17 you drew a lagging phase angle for a capacitative load when in fact the current through a capacitor leads the applied voltage. It lags for an inductive load. So the voltage across the LEDs would LEAD the applied mains voltage. That said, as always a most enjoyable video. Thanks.
Hey Clive! Do you think you can do a video on your reverse engineering process for the German LED circuit? I'm studying ECE and trying to follow along, but I'd love to see you going through how you came up with the circuit and did the calculations.
Toffifee is available in the US. Just asked my German wife why her family hasn't sent any of the other candies you showed. She said, "Emmm, Sleeeerp" when I show her your video. :)
Thanks for explaining the whole smart meter thing. My power provider keep hassling and I just keep ignoring them. They would probably have a shit fit if they came to install one with how old my existing meter is.
Hi Clive. A purely capacitive load, the current leads the voltage by 90 degrees giving no real load. The offset from the 90 degrees point (caused by the LED Vf), not the zero degree point defines the actual power use.
When you move your hand fast, I bet you notice the flickering. Got nice Philips Filament LED Bulbs. No flickering at all on AC not even through a camera.
Instead of 2 * 1uF in series, they could have used a 0.5uF giving the same capacity, but smaller height. So two in series is not done for space saving, but probably to get a higher voltage rating, and the fail-safe not getting a total short if one fails, as you mentioned.
12:38 You mention the inrush limiting resistor. Prior to that you mention the two smoothing capacitors and their resistors. This got me thinking, why not place a capacitor and resistor on each of the incoming AC lines?
I have a question ... Does the utility company have to put in ‘real work’ for your apparent power ? The way I see it the answer is yes, since all the capacitors people stick across the AC mains basically try and brake the 50Hz oscilation ... Again I don’t have the full picture, so, would love to hear some explanation on this
Capacitors don’t dissipate real power. That’s why capacitive droppers are popular - they don’t get hot like a resistor would (resistors dissipate real power). Caps simply “borrow” some power for a short time, then give it back every cycle. The problem for the power company is that the distribution lines have to carry that power that is oscillating back and forth. The power company does have to make up for what is lost as heat in the wires.
Aurimas Knieža VA = Volt Amps. Measure the Volts, Measure the Amps, multiply. W=Watts, actual energy from your steam engine (Mr. Watt invented the horsepower unit, representing equivalent horses pulling a wheel in the mining industry). In a perfect electricity to power conversion device, 1VA consumes and outputs 1 W. In a simple engine using only resistors, capacitors, inductors and motors, 1VA is at most 1W, but may be less if there is energy slushing back and forth in the wires without going anywhere. In such "linear circuits", the power factor can be brought back to 1.00 by just plugging in a capacitor or inductor just big enough to slush back and forth the same amount of VAs in the opposite direction, so the slushing stays inside your place. Mathematically, this can all be calculated using so called complex numbers. With linear circuits, the current will be a perfect sine way, just delayed from the voltage by an angle "phi"( φ ), and the power factor in W per VA becomes the cosine of phi (cos φ). However once you start plugging in neon tubes, diodes and other oddities, there is also non-power VAs from current that isn't a mains frequency sine wave, but either a harmonic overtone or complete noise. In 3-phase power grids, the 3rd harmonic is especially bad because even though it carries zero Watts, current at this frequency adds up instead of canceling out in the neutral wire, making it dangerously hot and melting the plastic. In US two phase systems, the same happens with the 2nd harmonic.
Aurimas Knieža VA is calculated from avg(U)×avg(I), where avg(f(t))=int abs(f(t)) dt/T. U=voltage, I=current, f=some function of time, usually sin, int=integral over one period, T=duration of one period. W is instead abs(int (U×I) dt)/T. As the abs() is outside of the integral here, negative values may occur, if U and I have different signs. For practical use, W is the physical power used, UI is the load on the wires. For resistive loads both are the same. For sine waves, UI=P×cos(phi), where phi is the shift angle between U and I. For the general case you actually have to do the integration.
Film capacitors always fail when across the mains, usually open / diminished capacity. You can get high reliability types that have two internal series connected caps, they just did that with two caps instead.
The power company's justification for charging for apparent power is that their equipment has to handle that amount of power. Here in Australia domestic consumers are charged for real power and commercial apparent.
Their wiring has to hande that current, however they do not have to generate much more electrical power. They only have to produce a bit more because of the increased losses in their wires and generators.
Not just their wires though, also their transformers and switchgear and protection devices have to be able to handle the current. In the bigger picture there's also the issue of harmonic distortion. Rather than our electrical utilities charging us more I'd prefer some regulation and/or greater consumer awareness.
Of course, anything that carries the current, i.e. everything that contains wires. My point was that you don´t have to burn 1KWh worth of fuel to supply 1KVAh to a load.
It would be nice to see you use one of the "energy saver device" capacitors in line with a device with terrible power factor like this to see it actually change the power factor.
On Amazon those Mozart's Balls in that size package are $25 Anerican plus tax and shipping. But they do look quite tasty and I do LOVE chocolate so I may still have to order some. :)
Here in Canada we've been using smart meters in most major cities for years. As the migration happens for a new area, though, I've also noticed a non-trivial number of homeowners complaining that their power bills have suddenly become very high. I've yet to check regional specs for metering practices, but I wonder if power factor is the issue that's making the difference.
Residential power factor isn’t that far from unity. That’s why power companies didn’t bother measuring it like they do for industrial users. It won’t make that big of a difference in your bill.
If it was a genuine German Made light, then the engineering would have been excellent, designed to last pretty welll forever. It's great to see a well made LED light, even from so long ago. The Gira company seems to have quite a succcessful history behind it.
It seems like they wanted to achieve functionality of an LM series regulator. Usually trying to emulate an IC with discrete components ends up being more expensive than the said IC. Also, LEDs are current controlled devices, so the proper thing to do would be to have a current source driving them rather than kludging with Zener diodes.
I'm heading over to Scotland next week for a month, hows hot is the weather over there, you say its hot in your room, over here in Australia we say its hot when it hits above 40 degrees Celsius ;) its was -2c this morning so can't wait to get away from this cold weather.
I find it hilarious how you've set up a scheme where people bribe you with neat candy in order to look at their electronics!
Wouldnt you do it that way???
Other companies charge hundreds so this is a fair deal lol
"Can't help feeling they could have done this alot simpler, but it's not how they did it." - German engineering summarized in one sentence
They do tend to go a little bit over the top at times. It's a tradition.
I'd say it's designed to be highly reliable, given the zeners across each LED.
yes you can have that simpler. But if you design that as an emergency floor light you need them running for ever. If they are broken you would need to get a electrician to replace them. It's a lot cheaper to buy error proof led light. And early leds being what they where that was a smart design.
Warum einfach wenn es kompliziert auch geht ?
bigclivedotcom Please start using decent camera. You could change shutter speed. If it was too bright you could change aperture, unlike in iPad.
A quit easy way to describe reactive, apparent and active power is this:
Active power is the power which is being converted in the device into mechanical/thermical/illuminating/... power. It's the one that makes your (classic) meter turn.
Reactive power is the power, which is temporaly stored in any magnetic oder electric field of a device, each halv-wave it will be pulled from the distributor an then pushed back again, it appears when capacitators or inductances are connected to AC.
Reactive power is commuting like a pendulum between the power distributor and the device, it will not do any work but it stresses the power lines.
Apparant power is the vectorial sum of active and reactive power and equals effective current multiplied by eff. voltage.
(Sry for my bad english, i am german and the last english lesson is 28 years ago)
Your English is good.
Good explanation about a subject which I've never quite understood. I wish I had taken more notice of my German lessons many many years ago so I could at least thank you in your own language! Danke schone!! :-)
Very nice explanation Herr Casimir...Danke
Favorite person on RUclips! Ever! Thank you sir, your videos are so natural, no clickbait, no makeup, no fancy studio.
deliquenme How do you know Clive isn't wearing bright red Lipstick ?
Because I've never seen him wearing Lipstick...I'm talking about his videos, not about what he is doing in his day to day life...And I'm 99% certain that he does not wear lipstick ever...
Big Clive in makeup? I'd pay good money to see THAT! 😂😂😂
"Beethoven's Balls - or whatever they are..." I'm dying over here...
David Ward apparently they have a creamy filling....
"I've probably done that wrong" after he prefectly pronounced the name. :)
Yeah 😂
That wasn't perfect at all.
Considering he doesn't speak german, it was really good.
Dave exactly my point. :)
For those who want to compare (1:24 in Clive's video), here is an old TV commercial: ruclips.net/video/Z36GTjbZ1Vc/видео.html
If the power companies start charging domestic consumers for apparent power, I'll start paying them with imaginary money, in multiples of i pounds...
LOL. As an electrical engineer for a power company, I have mixed feelings about this. We do have to provide capacity to serve the apparent power. Since power factor is non-linear, it has to be pretty bad before we start to care...say, about 80%. On certain rates, we will measure VAR's as well. For homes, it really hasn't mattered historically because most of the loads had good power factors with resistance lamps, heating, and induction motors. However, now that we are starting to see the LED lighting with sh!t power factors, we are beginning to take some notice. But, the precedent is set, so I can understand the angst....and I do pay a full electric bill as well. :)
The real way to deal with that would be to mandate a good power factor on anything sold in the country for domestic use. Large customers, historically the only ones charged for power factor, would have the nous to install active PFC gear. Your householder, notsomuch.
But yes, I too can see the power company's side, especially with all the electronic stuff showing up.
Interestingly I wonder if the mix of inductive stuff (motor loads like ceiling fans and extractor fans) and capacitive droppers... doesn't actually result in a fairly decent conventional power factor for the installation, but even then, PCs and smps's would mess up the waveform shape horribly
AFAIK, wattless units are very cheap. I know a few places that demand a PF of at least 0.95 to avoid penalties. I doubt they can charge domestic customers as there is no other phase for the meter to reference to.
haddockman30 As the hopi meter in the video demonstrated, measuring power factor on a single phase is trivial and needs no external reference. Measuring actual power was always the hard part.
haddockman30 I think the minimum power factor clause (on a full installation / whole house basis) is also in my home supply terms since before I was born. So problem is not plugging in too many capacitive or inductive loads (net, they cancel out). But as long as the heavier loads are close to 1.00, they should drown out occasional capacitive loads. Fortunately larger SMPS like in computers do include PFC circuits already.
Sometimes I miss the old big calculator
Do note that even if they charge for apparent power, you won't be charged for the full reactive power of the LEDs unless you only have these LEDs running. The relation is (apparent power)^2 = (real power)^2 + (reactive power)^2, the reactive power makes less difference if there's more real power being used.
Also the capacitive LED loads might even compensate slightly for inductive loads like your fridge.
I wouldn't draw any conclusions without measuring it.
Wow, zeners across series LEDs is such a simple yet clever solution to one of them going open circuit, its amazing, why havent I seen that yet?
Because it would add a lot of expense to most lamps with a lot of LEDs.
Sure but with most of these lamps with a huge number of series LEDs failing in exactly that way, it might be worth the money.
Chuckiele If a cheap lamp fails, the consumer will just buy another one. Built in obsolescence.
Does the same job as the metal oxide varistors they fitted across tungsten filament fairy lamps. If the filament goes open then the varistor goes short allowing the rest of the lamps to stay on. If an LED goes open then the zener will conduct but will drop a few volts.
Then LED lamps will end like incandescent lamps.
11:17 - According to the date in the manual, this type of light was introduced in 2011. A 1998 light probably wouldn’t use white LEDs, as they were very expensive then and not popular until the middle of the 2000s.
This light is, by the way, still sold for around 50 Euros (overpriced IMHO, even for ’German engineering’).
Everything made by GIRA is overpriced.
You can call any German electrical products overprized. Nevertheless, there are still people and companies to pay the ’little extra’ for German products, and so companies like Gira can exist.
Well, i wouldn't say ABB for example is overpriced, same as Siemens and so on...
It depends on the product. Whereas components like circuit breakers, RCDs etc. are reasonably priced (due to the highly automated assembly and no need for big advertising), this doesn’t apply in my opinion for example for most kitchen and household appliances by Siemens/Bosch (consolidated company branch). The more a product is advertised for private consumers, the more you pay for ’hot air’, as with fancy flickery night lights. And hot air is very expensive here in Germany ;-).
This was one of your most valueable videos for me - right now on the spot. Yesterday I searched for a simple, yet clever current regulation, I guess I found my solution. This is easily scalable to my needs.
If the supply authorities DO start charging for apparent power, then we can expect the LED lighting companies to fit power factor correction components - just as we currently see in traditional fluorescent ceiling fittings. Then, we'll see enterprising Chinese suppliers producing power factor correction "add-on" circuitry for existing LED luminaires!
It's more likely we'll see Chinese manufacturers printing PF =1 on the boxes and supplying the same lamps.
Cynical, but so very true!
Right next to "CE" ;)
PF is very simple, on the DC bus all you need is a boost converter. And a simple chip. That'll be an inductor, diode, tranny and a cheep IC.
@@beware_the_moose "China Equipment"
Scho-Ka-Kola might have been around in WW2, but the pilots also got "Panzerschokolade" which was actually _Crystal Meth_.
So be careful if you ever decide to order the "stuff that was fed to the WW2 pilots" :-D It might get you into trouble.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine#History,_society,_and_culture
I wonder if there will be some lighting standard in the future where there will be DC power supplies running each lighting circuit. With a dedicated power supply, it can take care of the power factor correction, rectification, smoothing, etc. which would simplify LED lamps, i.e. they would need to do little other than buck / boost the voltage for the LEDs, much like 12V lighting circuits. This would in theory do away with the issue of stroboscopic and low power factor LEDs as the main DC power supply would take care of the smoothing and power factor correction.
The problem is, that a 12v lamp is much more expensive.
In fact there would be no need to boost the voltage since each LED requires only about 3 volts so they can be connected in parallel or series-parallel. In my house I ran a 12 volt line to feed a number of 12v LED strip lights. What I failed to account for was the current required and I used only 3 Amp twin flex!
Manolis Gledsodakis That's the reason I would use 24v or 48v. It's still low voltage, but can handle much more power.
You can upgrade yours to 24.
There is a lot of voltage drop at 12v DC over thin wire.
Frank Gormanns Might as well go 48V like in telecoms. Anyway any efficient LED circuit running from a DC supply will need a switching regulator to convert back to AC to avoid wasting real power in a hot dropper of some kind. An AC to DC converter for a single lighting circuit can be an almost pure current supply feeding a series circuit.
Done that in our (and the neighbours) RV: ALL interior lighting is 12v d.c. LED.. We used the very reliable off-the-shelf 12v rated cable for garden lighting - really cheap, and very low volt drop, even on longish runs. Also we copied the UK Ring-Main approach - the lighting circuits are all double-fed, and all the regulation components were via our friendly Chinese suppliers - reliable, simple to repair (should they fail), and cheap enough to hold supplies of spare modules "just in case".
That smart meter thing got me two years ago. I had a large fan which got "dimmed" with a triac dimmer. I caused a terible power factor and we got charged like crazy! Last year I got a nice Variac and our "power consumption" went down a lot. Well what do we learn from that, always check your PF if you have a "smart" meter installed.
If the power companies start charging domestic consumers for apparent power I WILL switch back to incandescent bulbs
I am seriously considering candles.....
Jamie Phillips Did you think that all the way through?
They do heat up the room, and break very easily...
And they constantly need to be replaced.
I never left incandescent, they have a much more predictable lifetime and better quality light output, as well as being non-directional.
Incandescent has only one point of failure, yet with LED, CCFL, you have say 20+ components in the circuit, all of which can be a point of failure, and you never know if the thing is going to last past the first month.
I love Toffifee. But I never buy them because I eat them all in one go :-/
IgnoreMyChan With that reasoning I couldn't ever buy anything. :-)
Yep, just finished off the last one.
I do the same with Pringles and Philadelphia! 😂😂😂
Me with anything :(
google for "PERVITIN" or "Panzerschokolade"
it's not the caffeine that kept the pilots awake for three days
SSE keep hassling me to put in smart meters...PLEASE do a video on the snide possibilities the utility companies will employ
The fair thing to do is to make you pay for a meter guy to visit you every x month.
Leif Neland ...they text me a reminders for me to read my meters and I text back the readings quarterly..they read my meter once a year..they average out my usage and we agree on a monthly payment...
Mozart Balls, picked up loads when I went to Austria but they didn't survive very long outside of Austria as they are very nice!
Mind you, Salzburg in Austria has a market full of Mozart balls and the best testing Pretzals in the world!
I recently found out that americans don't know about marzipan.
Can you imagine that? Never having eaten marzipan?
I feel sorry for them.
whuzzzup marzipan can be poisonous tho
Surely Not ? they would have bound to have put peanut butter all over it. Wasn't almond paste one of the ingredient's for dynamite ?
Had marzipan. Don't care for it, and marzipan candies are rather rare here. We don't have bakeries and confectioners on every other corner. Lucky to find one at all in anything less than a city of 200,000.
Thus we are usually limited to what the massive companies make, and they are typically lowest common denominator.
I love the stuff what do you use instead on cakes under icing or frosting as the say over there ?
thehappylittlefox aka benji
I'm not sure I follow. Cake mix? A typically very light, sweet, and flavored bread.
Flour, sugar, eggs, butter or such, baking powder, and milk or such. Anything else is optional. Fruits, chocolate, ice cream, or even nuts.
The problem with low power factors isn't so much the requirement for thicker lines. After all, the power distribution system we have was set up in the old days when we all had filament lamps (non-lighting loads take significantly more current anyway), so they're already up to the job and factored in to the power costs. The problem is that resistive power losses in the lines are proportional to the square of the current: I²R.
Industrial users with motors (inductive loads) are already charged extra, and have been for a long time. These capacitive dropper lamps are now common enough that they're causing problems too. Well, they're causing problems at the local level. At the national grid level they're compensating for inductive loads and bringing down the losses on the national grid.
If the power companies charge for apparent power that will be a real rip-off. What they should charge for is the resistive losses in the lines. Naturally, they'll try to charge for apparent power until there's enough backlash that they charge for line losses instead.
Yes, put simply they might charge for shunting power in and out.
"It'll pay for the smart meters in the long run".
UK customers are already paying for the smart meters via recouped levies on energy bills.
It appears we've been paying for them already, as it's been another "government initiative".
Big clive is a legend how come he is not on tv love your voice to so soothing
Because TV is terrible. TV does not deserve Big Clive.
TV is overrated
Ok boomer... Who even watches TV anymore
Aldi sell Toffifee in Australia, I too have had to stop buying them for myself as they tend not to last very long after getting home from the shop, then I feel a bit sick. 🤒
lappy A short storage life then?
If you used a dropper made of a resonant circut with a capacitor and an inductor, the resonant frequency being 50Hz, could you get a power factor of 1?
Technically yes when XL = XC (inductive and capacitative reactance) but the reactances cancel each other out so there isn't anything limiting the current resulting in all the smoke escaping.
Love the idea that all electrical systems are effectively just smoke storage devices waiting for their chance to shine :)
I don't know what I like listening to more:
Your diagnosis of electronic circuits
or
Your diagnosis of chocolates.
:)
Very interesting information about those sneaky Smart metres, never heard about that before, they don't miss a trick do they ?££££
My shop is 3P. My utility company sent an engineer to help me create the best PF through load diversity. An 800 A 3P shop in a residential area was a problem for them. But they paid the bill to make it efficient. Their not all $ grubbing pigs.
Boonedock Journeyman in the uk they are. Sometimes they will charge you $30,000 to get a power supply put into a new house, occasionally even more.
In the U. S. the candy’s name is spelled Toffifay so that Americans will pronounce it roughly like the German spelling has Germans pronouncing it...
I just googled this and you are correct. O.o If I'd seen a picture of that candy anywhere without knowing of this, I would have assumed some kind of eastern european knock off of Toffifee. Heh.
EVERYTHING is spelled differently in America! 😂😂😂
5:11 This is kind of the reality in the Netherlands, government forced the power network maintainers to install smart meters in all homes before 2021. A couple of years ago a batch of smart meters was set to measure apparent power. They ended up replacing them but I don't think it was a mistake, just a test to see if people would notice.
They're already doing this in Canada (smart meters). My bill in the summer was always around 110$/month. Now I see bills anywhere from 150$ to 190$.
I have no idea about what most of the components on the circuit actually do but i still watch these videos anyway in an attempt to learn something new.
That would be fairly new and shocking to me that you will be charged for apparent power as a household consumer. And even if: 10 VAh will not be the same as 10Wh because that is not Energy that gets used and only oscillates betwee producer and consumer.
I work at a big industrial company in germany as an electrician and of course we get charged for VAhs but not nearly as much. This extra cost is onyl there to cover the additional expenses that occur when having higher current like bigger cables, more losses on the cable and all that. Thats why we compensate most of it as the main loads are big motors
So maybe the smart meter should charge the consumer for shunting the energy out to him and credit the customer for energy in to the company?
Maybe we should start investing in those dodgy "power saving" plugs now before they start charging for power factor... :P
twocvbloke Just buy a capacitor for your fridge.
davbj1 The fridge is an inductive load. It pulls the power factor to the other side.
davbj1 The capacitators in a fridge's compressor are needed to create rotating magnetic field, not for phase shifting.Without them, the compressor will just make a nice humming noise while getting hot an hotter.
Casimir Konrad I meant a compensating capacitor, not the running capacitor.
davbj1 I was just thinking the same, but the fridge runs 24/7 in intervals, your lights and TV don't.
You never now the total until you measure it.
there are 2 caps to increase the volt tolerance. adding them in series doesnt increase the capacity, but doubles the voltage rating to 500V, which is needed because the max voltage difference between two 90degree shifted sine waves is ✓2 times the individual amplitudes. so in this case about 350V(minus ca. 20V for the leds), which would be too much for a single 250V cap.
i guess... ^^
Alex Trinker - You're in no way wrong but I think the reason it's strange is just because they didn't use a capacitor rated at 400V or higher in the first place...
Normally you use a single capacitor that just has the voltage rating you want. Nothing difficult about that.
I suspect they are doing this because they may also make a version that runs on 110V. Then they only need to use a different PCB, but the same components.
Kevin, ganz übler Vorwand mit dem Füllmaterial. Ganz übel.
Wenn man schon Kevin heißt ...
your pronunciation of "edel tropfen in nuss" was pretty good , well done
I used to love Mozart's Balls! I'd bring loads back from Berlin whilst on holiday. Unfortunately I'm Diabetic now (probably due to eating so many Mozart's Balls).
Also, yes, we do have Toffifee here in the United States! It's available in most grocery stores. One of my very favorites!
In some other video's comments someone complained about reliability of LED filament lamps (Because of voltage peaks? I'm running those lamps w/o problems).
However now I want to see a filament LED lamp with zeners in parallel. Those would be efficient and nice looking, have a good power factor _and_ they would be very reliable.
Wow! That was very nice to listen to. I didn't understand a thing he said. Only at the end I could understand that he liked the sweets and that dam light.
Well I have to say I can understand the point of the power companies to compensate for the higher and higher ammount of devices with terrible power factors, this was not so bad in the past but now private households are drifting further and further into lower power factors which costs the power companies more money but the private households less.
It´s not that bad.
Firstly, most major SMPS nowadays have APFC, so they are not a problem.
Secondly, all LED lamps above a certain power will use a SMPS instead of a capacitive dropper because the capacitor would be too big and expensive. They also have a better PF than a capacitive dropper.
Yes bigger SMPS might have active PFC but when I look at all my equipment I think my PC's PSU is the only one with PFC. I'm no expert in power distribution and all that but I think this is more and more a problem than in the past.
APFC is not very common yet in small consumer SMPS, but I expect they will become more common in the future no matter what. There are more and more SMPS controller ICs that do APFC and all the other switch-mode action in one device, and even full on SMPS regulators (aka the IC includes all the switches, only caps and inductors/transformers are external).
Industrial SMPS usually have APFC no matter how big they are already.
FesixGermany Tell me, what is the rating of the most powerful electrical item in your house? And how does this compare to your electronic items that have a bad power factor?
What I'm trying to say is that it adds up, yes my oven or my washing machine might be way more powerful but these resistive loads always existed, incendescent bulbs are replaced by LEDs with bad power factor supplies, yes the LEDs are drawing less power but what about the apparent power?
Maybe I'm missing the point, just my thoughts.
It's refreshing to see a well engineered piece of tech. Especially one that has failure mode planning
The modern rotating disc panel meters also measure rms current and rms voltage (i.e. power factor isnt taken into consideration..). Only reason I know is that Clive mentioned these panel meters measure real power only and I remember having a bank of fairly high value AC caps plugged in and the disc spun faster than if an oven is on...
I learn something from almost every one of your videos, Clive. Thank you.
I hope you explain more on how to fix power factor.
sneaky Smart metres, that explains what happens now in Egypt all who get new metres are complaining that they pay more without knowing what is that for or what is happening .. thanks a lot for pointing to that.
Yes, Toffifee are available here in the US, although for some reason they are called "Toffifay" instead. I have only started seeing them relatively recently, though, so they may be somewhat new over here.
I found this oddly difficult to follow
Thanks for putting the food stuff to the end of the video so I (and other people bothered by these noises) can skip it :)
I really like your videos a lot!
Should do a video on apparent vs real power. 🔋
Barry Lewis made giant Toffifee on his channel a few months back. Those things look like they could be wildly addictive.
I got to use a multimeter for the very first time yesterday, poking the probey bits directly onto the terminals in an exposed wall socket. It was thrilling! And between this channel and ElectroBOOM, I had at least some idea what was going on and what he was talking about. :)
We do have Toffifee in Canada (and Werther’s Original sold by the same company)
Toffifee is absolutely available in Canada, mostly around Canadian thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter since they're the big feast holidays, but you can find it year round in some stores. Super sticky toffee in the teeth, though.
Many smart metres don't work anyway. If you switch the company you buy electricity from usually the old smart meter doesn't work. Also the original smart metres don't tell you what the instantaneous usage is, so they're no use for monitoring hourly use and hence trying to reduce your consumption.
Schokakola has not crystal meth in them anymore. Just saying.
Jörg Zingler there never was , Back Back then it contained cocaine ....the Meth was a seperat pill called pervitin
Cocaine? Source for that? I mean, not the cocaine, the claim.
Kalum Batsch Google "Hausfrauen Schokolade
Considering that cocaine is derived from the leaves of a cocoa plant; use the whole hog.
+sivalley
Did you seriously just now confuse cocoa and coca, or was that meant as a joke?
Hahaha I never thought I would see you “pop out” one of Beethoven’s Balls 😂 ....
Great video as always.
I moded some of my led lights to resistive dropers , good PF and nice light output.
Graham R Dyer: And more heat...
regarding the input circuity: it is good design practice (in many cases mandatory, even though it is often abandoned for cost-saving reasons) to go through your circuit and imagine a short and an open fault condition for every individual component, then evaluate the potential dangers and address safety issues (single-fault condition). if i remember correctly, IEC 60950 should cover the details.
fortunately I opted for a smart meter without remote control functionality when they said my old meter had to go. The meter man still has to visit my house :)
Slightly strange stereo echo in my headphones but other than that, great video, thanks.
I'd love if you could do a dedicated video on real power vs apparent power, power factor, etc. I struggle to understand it.
Candy teardowns are actually very interesting :p
Clive, not to be nit-picky but at 6.17 you drew a lagging phase angle for a capacitative load when in fact the current through a capacitor leads the applied voltage. It lags for an inductive load. So the voltage across the LEDs would LEAD the applied mains voltage. That said, as always a most enjoyable video. Thanks.
If they do change to apparent then will this affect the legislation. Will they change the 85 lm/W minimum being introduced in 2020 to compensate?
Hey Clive! Do you think you can do a video on your reverse engineering process for the German LED circuit? I'm studying ECE and trying to follow along, but I'd love to see you going through how you came up with the circuit and did the calculations.
That red jar - a buddy of mine has one of those. I think it was given as rations for the german troops during WW2.
I feel like I need to try some of that Scho-Ka-Kola
You can get it in the UK apparently. My brother tried some and then ordered a pack of ten tins!
The picture wasn not really jumpy from later playback on You Tube.. .sounds like the problem may have been an unhappy monitor at your end...
Now I want chocolate!
Toffifee is available in the US. Just asked my German wife why her family hasn't sent any of the other candies you showed. She said, "Emmm, Sleeeerp" when I show her your video. :)
In the states we call it Toffifay, but same exact candy
Thanks for explaining the whole smart meter thing. My power provider keep hassling and I just keep ignoring them. They would probably have a shit fit if they came to install one with how old my existing meter is.
Hi Clive. A purely capacitive load, the current leads the voltage by 90 degrees giving no real load. The offset from the 90 degrees point (caused by the LED Vf), not the zero degree point defines the actual power use.
Bonus fun fact: the production site for those "edle tropfen" is just 11km away from here :D
When you move your hand fast, I bet you notice the flickering. Got nice Philips Filament LED Bulbs. No flickering at all on AC not even through a camera.
I have seen the toffifee here in NZ. I think I need to do a snacks segment on my channel, I like chocolate too..
you're back from Da Oz eh :)
Please someone, make a confection called Bethoven's Balls.
Yes, you can get Toffifee in Australia, but only Aldi sells them.
Instead of 2 * 1uF in series, they could have used a 0.5uF giving the same capacity, but smaller height.
So two in series is not done for space saving, but probably to get a higher voltage rating, and the fail-safe not getting a total short if one fails, as you mentioned.
Do you enjoy classic candy drops ? Hard sugar candy?
12:38 You mention the inrush limiting resistor. Prior to that you mention the two smoothing capacitors and their resistors. This got me thinking, why not place a capacitor and resistor on each of the incoming AC lines?
It's the middle of the night and I need some chocolate right now!!!
I have a question ...
Does the utility company have to put in ‘real work’ for your apparent power ?
The way I see it the answer is yes, since all the capacitors people stick across the AC mains basically try and brake the 50Hz oscilation ...
Again I don’t have the full picture, so, would love to hear some explanation on this
Capacitors don’t dissipate real power. That’s why capacitive droppers are popular - they don’t get hot like a resistor would (resistors dissipate real power). Caps simply “borrow” some power for a short time, then give it back every cycle. The problem for the power company is that the distribution lines have to carry that power that is oscillating back and forth. The power company does have to make up for what is lost as heat in the wires.
@@stargazer7644 thanks a lot - nicely phrased !
Can someone explain the VA-voltamps?
W=VA*pf
You may read something about the power factor.
Aurimas Knieža VA = Volt Amps. Measure the Volts, Measure the Amps, multiply. W=Watts, actual energy from your steam engine (Mr. Watt invented the horsepower unit, representing equivalent horses pulling a wheel in the mining industry). In a perfect electricity to power conversion device, 1VA consumes and outputs 1 W. In a simple engine using only resistors, capacitors, inductors and motors, 1VA is at most 1W, but may be less if there is energy slushing back and forth in the wires without going anywhere. In such "linear circuits", the power factor can be brought back to 1.00 by just plugging in a capacitor or inductor just big enough to slush back and forth the same amount of VAs in the opposite direction, so the slushing stays inside your place. Mathematically, this can all be calculated using so called complex numbers.
With linear circuits, the current will be a perfect sine way, just delayed from the voltage by an angle "phi"( φ ), and the power factor in W per VA becomes the cosine of phi (cos φ).
However once you start plugging in neon tubes, diodes and other oddities, there is also non-power VAs from current that isn't a mains frequency sine wave, but either a harmonic overtone or complete noise. In 3-phase power grids, the 3rd harmonic is especially bad because even though it carries zero Watts, current at this frequency adds up instead of canceling out in the neutral wire, making it dangerously hot and melting the plastic. In US two phase systems, the same happens with the 2nd harmonic.
Aurimas Knieža VA is calculated from avg(U)×avg(I), where avg(f(t))=int abs(f(t)) dt/T. U=voltage, I=current, f=some function of time, usually sin, int=integral over one period, T=duration of one period. W is instead abs(int (U×I) dt)/T. As the abs() is outside of the integral here, negative values may occur, if U and I have different signs.
For practical use, W is the physical power used, UI is the load on the wires.
For resistive loads both are the same. For sine waves, UI=P×cos(phi), where phi is the shift angle between U and I. For the general case you actually have to do the integration.
Toffife is available at the Walmart I work at (and employees get a discount--unsurprisingly).
Film capacitors always fail when across the mains, usually open / diminished capacity.
You can get high reliability types that have two internal series connected caps, they just did that with two caps instead.
The power company's justification for charging for apparent power is that their equipment has to handle that amount of power. Here in Australia domestic consumers are charged for real power and commercial apparent.
Their wiring has to hande that current, however they do not have to generate much more electrical power. They only have to produce a bit more because of the increased losses in their wires and generators.
Not just their wires though, also their transformers and switchgear and protection devices have to be able to handle the current. In the bigger picture there's also the issue of harmonic distortion.
Rather than our electrical utilities charging us more I'd prefer some regulation and/or greater consumer awareness.
Of course, anything that carries the current, i.e. everything that contains wires.
My point was that you don´t have to burn 1KWh worth of fuel to supply 1KVAh to a load.
It would be nice to see you use one of the "energy saver device" capacitors in line with a device with terrible power factor like this to see it actually change the power factor.
I absolutely love your video and the contents that you show and them are very helpful thank you
Can you please say "early days of LEDs" one more time? 🤤
Big Clive, no bulltshit, just facts.
On Amazon those Mozart's Balls in that size package are $25 Anerican plus tax and shipping. But they do look quite tasty and I do LOVE chocolate so I may still have to order some. :)
Here in Canada we've been using smart meters in most major cities for years. As the migration happens for a new area, though, I've also noticed a non-trivial number of homeowners complaining that their power bills have suddenly become very high. I've yet to check regional specs for metering practices, but I wonder if power factor is the issue that's making the difference.
Residential power factor isn’t that far from unity. That’s why power companies didn’t bother measuring it like they do for industrial users. It won’t make that big of a difference in your bill.
If it was a genuine German Made light, then the engineering would have been excellent, designed to last pretty welll forever. It's great to see a well made LED light, even from so long ago.
The Gira company seems to have quite a succcessful history behind it.
It seems like they wanted to achieve functionality of an LM series regulator. Usually trying to emulate an IC with discrete components ends up being more expensive than the said IC. Also, LEDs are current controlled devices, so the proper thing to do would be to have a current source driving them rather than kludging with Zener diodes.
I'm heading over to Scotland next week for a month, hows hot is the weather over there, you say its hot in your room, over here in Australia we say its hot when it hits above 40 degrees Celsius ;) its was -2c this morning so can't wait to get away from this cold weather.
Hello I have an led chip and I want to know how I can power it. Can you help?