VOLTAGE OPTIMIZATION

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    A past Nelson Hydro engineer spoke about Voltage Optimization at a public
hydro budget meeting a couple years ago.   We haven't heard about it since.

This could save a lot of energy, thus getting this city to its goal of 100% renewable
by having far more cheap electricity available.


The concept is similar to your home water pressure regulator.  In Nelson city water pressure
can be and is higher than what you want inside your home.  Typical home water pressure
regulators are set for about 60 psi.   City water pressure on the inlet side at my home is over 80 psi it can be much higher at times.   This could cause leaks in your plumbing, that is why you have a water pressure regulator.

These devices require no attention they just keep working year after year reliably.

The same concept can be applied to Electricity.

At the moment  I am seeing 128.7 vac, at my electric outlets, I have seen 130vac and higher.

Let me show you basic electric principles and ohm's law.

You have likely seen nameplates on electric appliances such as below

Here is how Voltage Optimization can work.
Using ohm's law if Voltage is maintained at 110V in a linear device. (resistance remains the same current increases with voltage, therefore power used).

Solve for Resistance above we get 12 ohms.
Current is E/R or 110V/12 ohms = 9.16 amps
Power is I x E or 9.16 amps x 110V = 1000 Watts or 1kW

What happens if the voltage is 130V?

Using ohm's law you will arrive at 1.4kW,   40% more power.

Sounds too good to be true, it violates one of the basic laws of physics: conservation of energy.

Well yes that is true for the most part.  But putting a brick in the toilet tank that saves a litre per flush over a million toilets is a million litres of water saved.   Will you notice if the lights aren't quite as bright, the tv and computer and everything else will still work.

 A study done by Intel Corporation(most computers main processor IC comes from Intel) found a 9% reduction in voltage on their microprocessors saved 20% in power consumption.

Check out these case studies from dozens of companies.  Most of this coming from Europe where electricity is costly.

Over 10.5% energy savings for the RAF.

These are using on site power optimizers, what if Nelson hydro did this?  What happened to the study the engineer was speaking about a couple years ago?

Although most of the information is talking about devices in individual homes, what if Nelson hydro did this, optimization at their level would translate into stable lower voltages in your home.


The cheapest power made is the power conserved.

Could Nelson hydro reduce power consumption by 20% how about just 10%?.

Their annual total power load is approaching 200,000MWh per year.

Saving 20MWh/year would be the equivalent of powering almost 2000 average homes.

Nelson hydro buys $6M in excess power from Fortis annually.

How many electric vehicles could use that energy.

A Nissan leaf uses 20.13kWh/100 km.

20MWh/20kWh =1000 x 100km = 100,000km.

Using too much voltage might be adding an unnecessary 10–20 percent to your electricity bill; multiply that across the whole of the industrial world and you get a big problem that's bad for the economy and bad for the planet.

save up to 26% on your electric bills

technology is demonstrated and proven

the national grid case study

How it works

I think I will call Nelson hydro and get them to turn the voltage down in my house
its reading just under 130 volts, I would like to see 110 volts.

Thats only a 15% voltage change but it gives almost 40% reduction in power, see calculations above.
Would you like to see your hydro bill reduced by 40%?