Member postings for Andrew Mawson

Replying to "Dave":

You are working on a fundamental misunderstanding. Despite the scale of my workshops I am NOT an industrial customer - I am a retired private individual and metered accordingly.

It was I that brought up the power factor issue with TLC thinking that it might have a bearing not them. Their representative used his own instrumentation and sadly I wasn't able to note what it was - in fact he had two sets to compare results (which they did)

The only meter that is relevant here is the one by which you are charged by your electricity supplier.

If IT shows excess power consumed by ballasts and capacitors left in fittings upgraded to LED then you need to be concerned as it will hit you in the pocket.

This was the case for me any other theoretical arguments are just hot air.

The 36 LED fluorescent replacement tubes referred to in the madmodder thread have been installed for over a year now without a single failure. It was when I was considering buying a further 28 tubes for my welding shop that I decided to check that they were actually saving power before investing more cash - and they weren't !

Now that the capacitors and chokes have been eliminated and I've installed the extra 28 tubes - the power saving is approximately 2kW in both my main workshop and the welding shop when all the lights are on and the perceived lighting is actually better.

Article titled 'Electricity getting very expensive in the workshop'

by the way

NO they are NOT low. In my case (author of the thread in madd modder forum) a 24 watt tube was demostrated to draw 80 watt - actually MORE than the original tube. My findings were verified by TLC who are a very large electrical distributor, and all credit to them they provided two sparks for a day to remove the capacitors and wire out the chokes in my workshop. The capacitors were the major factor.

Anyone want any power factor correction cPcitors - I now have about 40 surplus

I'd refer you to the original article in mad madder as there is a lot of detail omitted in this reference.

I have an excellent ex BT wire tracer that I use for problems like this. Two parts, clip the first part (an oscillator) to the disconnected end of the wire to trace, trace using the second part that picks up the stray signal. Works like a charm. They very frequently are on eBay for not much money

I've known John ever since the only tech contact method was 'Newsgroups' - so a pretty long time !

He has always been helpful generous and informative - a true friend albeit only usually electronically connected. (Although he's been here to the farm a few times)

So John I'm sure that you know this already but my thoughts are definitely with you at this difficult time and I look forward to the time when having come through it, you can once more call me a Clumsy Bastard

Andrew Mawson