Mains Electricity - Voltage Levels - The General Characteristics of The General Power Distribution Network

The General Characteristics of The General Power Distribution Network

There are other main differences between different national networks beside the current and frequency. Mainly how the electric distribution network is designed and for what tolerances of electric Voltage spikes and Power outages are. The main difference is if the network is designed for the heavy industry or for fine power household consumers. (Note that this has to do with the historical development of the electric distribution grid, mainly the situation when it was converted from DC to AC power networks and has nothing to do with the voltage or frequency used. Rather a distribution company customer relations and cost development culture matter than anything else, but causes some pretty obvious impact on consumer conditions.)

In general the 230V systems especially Three-phase electric power based networks that are designed to fill industrial needs (like in central and northern Europe). In countries like Germany often farms with much heavier power consumption are located right in the middle of pretty large villages (share the power grid with the neighbouring local household users). In Scandinavia many country villages are next neighbour to a heavy industry.

While other especially 115V networks like in the USA are designed to be cheap conversions from the DC current past systems to AC, using originally the old cables for lower costs, rather than benefiting the full potential of the Three-phase electric power AC power systems. The solution was separate distribution networks to heavy power consuming users like industry and much "nicer" household power characteristics than in 230V environments.

One side effect is that computers were mainly made in the US in the past and the electric power units (especially the IBM PC) was made using Switched-mode power supplys that both gave a pulsating Direct current but also very sensitive for power Voltage spikes (can be of very high voltage but very short) and current Power outages that are much more common in 230V networks due to the design of the general network, than in general in 115V US nets.

Living next neighbour to a factory plant might make computers electronics parts (most commonly the Switched-mode power supply) burn or memories being wiped. And SSD disks are more sensitive (due to it is plain memory circuits) than Harddisk being wiped out. Where the Harddisk controller board (Hard disk drive failure) is the main weak point for Voltage spikes. One shall notice that electronics on for instance controller boards are in fact own computers with own secondary memory do not know what to do if the secondary memory is wiped, and so is apparently dead. The volatile primary memory is mostly not that sensitive because it does not keep anything after power off. But or electronic components can also just burn from Voltage spikes and are dead by being physically faulty (and must be replaced). By Transient fault Power outages the PC just suddenly reboots, real nasty for servers or "loosing the job" being working on a PC workstation. Transient fault Power outage could also be noticed by lamp bulbs are often flickering, and not always causes the PC to reboot. Flickering lights is a symptom telling to push the save button often not "loosing the job".

Having a building construction site next neighbour also means the risk of construction workers cheating with the electric installations and using much heavier power tools than the building network is designed for, even making cheat circuit wiring and nails (instead of fuses) in the fuse boxes, causing big problems for neighbouring computer users. It is very hard to claim damage due to the problem to find who the cheating party really is and to prove that their power Voltage spikes damaged the computer goods.

Surge protector gears are in general good electric power Voltage spikes protection. Surge protector gears are often built-in in standard Power strips and are a good very cheap, but not perfect protection.

Uninterruptible power supply is a much better, but is heavy bulky, usually very expensive and power consuming way of protecting computer installations. Uninterruptible power supply are used in 230V European environments in general for power Voltage spikes and quick Power outages protection, rather than true long time Persistent faults. While in other countries mainly based on diesel generators or bad maintained power grids Persistent faults are the main problem Uninterruptible power supply is used for. Uninterruptible power supply lasting long time is very expensive and in heavy reliance installations used until emergency diesel power is running. Uninterruptible power supply are because of this always used in large professional computer server installations in 230V environments.

The cold war defensive Electromagnetic pulse (EMP) protection science gave a lot to support the computer power protection knowledge. The electric grid could be a huge EMP antenna and phone stations and computer server sites had to be protected.