Electric smoker keeps tripping fuse box????

[Andy BB]

One other aspect of US/UK electricity that seems to get overlooked is the fact that mains electric is alternating current. And american electricity - 120 Volts - cycles at 60cycles/sec, rather than the UK 240V @ 50 cycles/sec.

I'll let the electricians explain the implications

 

[awarner]

Actually the frequency 50/60Hz can play fun as well thanks for the jog in memory Andy but as this is just a heater element it will not matter as it is simple resistance of the element.
Differences in frequency tend to effect electronic equipment and motors ie a US motor running at 60Hz will be faster than the same motor in the UK at 50Hz.

Very simple description not wanting to go off topic or to send anyone to sleep.
Best way to think about frequency is like a wave which is why we call a single AC frequency cycle as a "waveform" so we start at 0v and in a rising curve go up to +230v then down to -230v and back up to 0v.
So 1Hz is a single operating cycle over one second, 50Hz is therefore 50 cycles in a second. So any electrical equipment that relies of switching operations will be affected by going from 60Hz to 50Hz so in the US electronic items are running faster.

 

[ged]

AC does funny things to your power calculations. The power calculation (watts=volts multiplied by amps) is strictly only for DC. In general it doesn't work exactly for AC because of 'reactance' which things like capacitors and inductors have, but as has been said it's usually pretty close for something like a heater element because there's relatively little reactance in a heater element.

I won't get into it here for fear of making another idiotic mistake and boring the socks off people, but search for 'power factor' if you're interested.

 

[awarner]

Power factor is another thing entirely but only really needs to be taken into consideration to correct reactive loads generally caused by motors and older non high frequency lighting systems ie anything with a large coil of wire.
Capacitors are generally used to counteract the reactive affect.
As you say this is not the place to go into detail, I deal with capacitors at work quite a bit and the off topic is causing far too many flashbacks from my days with power electronics at college lol

General domestic equipment the calculations are sound and advisable to use as the effects of reactive load has already been taken in to consideration and corrected (within reason) during the design and build.

Good to get the grey matter thinking again though especially now my night shift has finished, four days of scouting tasks and organisation ahead.

 

[Grendel]

Big THANK YOU to awarner for checkinfg my heating eliment.

Alas it's fubar. Just need to see if you can buy UK 230V versions of the 1500w eliment now.