Thanks, Mercurylamps.

Quote from: rapidstart on November 06, 2015, 07:43:40 PM

Our off-peak hot water storage tank is controlled by this. The ripple pulses causes fluctuations to those cheap 3-stage touch lamps and to the newest dimmer switch. I have an APC brand UPS that would go ballistic when the ripple pulses came through. I had to stop using it as the constant clicking of its relay and alarm became annoying. The problem times seemed to be around 5pm and again from 10pm.

I remember when I was a kid, the house I grew up in had a electromechanical ripple switch that had a wheel that spins round when it received the signals. I could remember the clicking and humming noises from the meter box everytime the signal was being received.

I love falling asleep everynight to the ripple signals coming through my fan every 15-30 minutes.

Oh, yes, I forgot that you can hear it coming from the ceiling fan. This fan is almost 30 years old and hums at the best of times but is worse when the ripple pulse comes through. Fortunately it's not in a bedroom. I'll try and get a picture of the ripple control receiver on the meter box.

Here is a picture of the Ripple Control receiver on my meter board. Used to turn the off-peak hot water tank element on/off. Usually kicks in around midnight.

Wow! That looks newer than the one I have on my house. I've got an older electronic one which has a clear cover but a brown base. I'll get a picture when I can.

The town I go to school in has a highly antiquated electrical system. The wires feeding streetlights (120/240v; many are glass lensed NEMA buckets of 100&175w MV!) are highly degraded with mostly bare lines, which has wispy fibers dangling from it, so I assume it is asbestos insulated wire. The new sections of wire has black rubber insulation that isn't degraded very much. I notice that the lights will sometimes dim for a fraction of a second and then everything is all good. I talked to the teachers and they said that its from them working on the school (they're adding on a new part of the south wing in addition to the demolition and rebuilding of most of the main building in the summer). A few times around 2:00pm, the power has gone completely out for about a min to the whole place. My computer teecher said that a gust of wind is enough to make the lights dim in the whole town of about 800 peeps lol.

Wow! That looks newer than the one I have on my house. I've got an older electronic one which has a clear cover but a brown base. I'll get a picture when I can.

What I don't understand is the label 'real time clock fitted'. Why would it need a time clock when this unit replaced an older style time clock? I thought the idea of these ripple control units was to enable the electricity supplier to have complete control of the switching cycles? For the ripple control receiver to also have a time clock as well, doesn't make sense to me. Looking at the unit, a time clock is not obvious.

The town I go to school in has a highly antiquated electrical system. The wires feeding streetlights (120/240v; many are glass lensed NEMA buckets of 100&175w MV!) are highly degraded with mostly bare lines, which has wispy fibers dangling from it, so I assume it is asbestos insulated wire. The new sections of wire has black rubber insulation that isn't degraded very much. I notice that the lights will sometimes dim for a fraction of a second and then everything is all good. I talked to the teachers and they said that its from them working on the school (they're adding on a new part of the south wing in addition to the demolition and rebuilding of most of the main building in the summer). A few times around 2:00pm, the power has gone completely out for about a min to the whole place. My computer teecher said that a gust of wind is enough to make the lights dim in the whole town of about 800 peeps lol.

That reminds me of when I was at TAFE (college) a number of years ago. Lightning struck a power pole outside and knocked out power for a few minutes. When it returned, the computers would power on like normal but the connection to the server didn't work. Apparently the network hub was fried.

What I don't understand is the label 'real time clock fitted'. Why would it need a time clock when this unit replaced an older style time clock? I thought the idea of these ripple control units was to enable the electricity supplier to have complete control of the switching cycles? For the ripple control receiver to also have a time clock as well, doesn't make sense to me. Looking at the unit, a time clock is not obvious.

That is strange indeed. I know these modern units are programmable using an IR link by the engineer so perhaps the clock is programmed in but like you say it's pointless to have a time clock built in if it's a ripple switch.