Mains voltage range in India?

[treez]

We need to make products for Indian mains voltage.

Please advise what is the range of mains voltages seen in India?
Highest. lowest, and amount of time at highest and lowest?

I am not talking about 50 microsecond mains transients here.
Not talking about tiny spikes. Talking about steady state, including short term excursions (swells) of the mains to high
or low level.

Also, does it go on and off often?, and what is seen at the wall socket when the mains suddenly comes back ON? (a big spike?)

 

[BradtheRad]

India suffers long-term brownout conditions. Several threads here have asked about methods of grid voltage stabilization (usually in India). One reported 50 percent voltage sag. It was a couple years ago just before news reported a grid blackout across half of India.

 

[barry]

India suffers long-term brownout conditions. Several threads here have asked about methods of grid voltage stabilization (usually in India). One reported 50 percent voltage sag. It was a couple years ago just before news reported a grid blackout across half of India.

In other words, the voltage range is 0 to 230V.

 

[treez]

I am interested in India, because (and my sincere apologies to all from India) i am actually interested in the worst case voltages in UK and EU...and i reckon its probably more openly discussed in India, whereas in EU and UK the grid excursions are kind of private to the power companies. So if we take the worst case from India, then we can probably say its no worse than that in EU and UK.

 

[Easy peasy]

it is very location specific, sags down to 180v only last a few minutes as eventually a breaker blows due to over current due to constant power loads, then of course the remaining connected loads see a jump in volts - likely back to 230/240 ...

equip should be designed to stop or draw less power below 207vac and self protect or tolerate up to 265vac and beyond

not much point making equip that will expire too easily.

 

[BradtheRad]

Quote from a Forbes magazine article:



Ensuring that the electricity being provided is of a high quality remains a critical challenge for the expansion of Indian infrastructure, without blackouts, brown-outs or other disruptions of service. India suffers from rampant electricity theft and heavily indebted electricity distribution companies (DISCOMs), and poor quality electricity has resulted in damaged equipment, losses of productivity and lower investment.

--------------------------------------------------

India is just one nation where these images are common. Local residents risk their lives climbing on utility poles, attaching wires in hopes to improve their lives by pirating electric power. The result is chronic grid brownouts.

 

[treez]

sags down to 180v only last a few minutes as eventually a breaker blows due to over current due to constant power loads, then of course the remaining connected loads see a jump in volts - likely back to 230/240 ...

Thanks, that sounds like the very recipe for a mains transient? ...perhaps of a few kV?

..as the mains springs back up to 240vac, all that fault current was flowing in the line inductance, when the breaker blows, the energy in that inductive current has nowhere to go....so the huge mains transient voltage spike then happens?

 

[betwixt]

No - the spike is dissipated across ALL the connected devices. When you look at inductive spikes from power lines, don't forget there is a fraction of an Ohm load at the critical end formed from all the attached devices.

Brian.

 

[treez]

No - the spike is dissipated across ALL the connected devices. When you look at inductive spikes from power lines, don't forget there is a fraction of an Ohm load at the critical end formed from all the attached devices.

Thanks, so then, what we would assume from this is that mains voltage spikes only occur in regions where very little is connected to the mains line?

 

[Easy peasy]

Mains spikes occur near large factories and other large un-predictable loads - and in the country or anywhere lightning strikes may occur

also failing on-load tap changers of disti transformers