Maker Pro
Maker Pro

Converting foreign appliances

I have a baby monitor someone brought back to australia from the uk. Both the monitors base station and the parent unit have uk style wall warts. Both tranformers outputs are rated at 9v 300ma. The parent unit sits in a cradle and has rechargable ni mh batteries. Is it safe to replace both of these transformers with australian 9v - 1 amp transformers? The original xformers are rated at 220v for the uk whereas in australia we use 240volts.

Thanks
 

Harald Kapp

Moderator
Moderator
Yes, that should be safe provided the australian units are safe ;)
It is even probable that the uk transformers work very well on 240V (UK standard, as far as I know in most of Europe, is 230V anyway).
 
Formally continental Europe was 220V and UK 240V, both with +/-10% allowed tolerance.
That's why 230V become the standardized voltage. So yes two travel adapters should do the job.
 
As far as I know both UK and europe are classed as 230 Volts. Harmonisation caused UK 240 Volts to have a wider tolerance so it could match 230 Volts. The same in europe 220 Volts became 230 Volts. It was just a paperwork exercise and the voltages did not change so in the UK its still 240 and europe is still 220. Although its branded as 230?
Adam
 
To me it's mostly impact the appliance manufacturers as they now design things centered around the normalized 230V.
My felling is that they progressively adapt the grid to better match this.
 
In the UK no change has been made, they know the varriance and have just fudged the figures. There is no plan to change anything it would be like re-building the great wall of china.
Adam
 
Here in Belgium we recently have a grid transformer outage following an overflow. When replaced the main goes to 235 from 225V (I leave "close" to the transformer).
That's why I guess that they progressively adapt the grid.
Olivier
 
I have a baby monitor someone brought back to australia from the uk. Both the monitors base station and the parent unit have uk style wall warts. Both tranformers outputs are rated at 9v 300ma. The parent unit sits in a cradle and has rechargable ni mh batteries. Is it safe to replace both of these transformers with australian 9v - 1 amp transformers? The original xformers are rated at 220v for the uk whereas in australia we use 240volts.

Thanks
The voltage differences could make a significant difference in actual operation, since the output would be about 10% higher due to transformer ratio differences between the primary and secondary. NOTE: Info only. The biggest difference is when a 60 hz unit is powered by a 50 hz supply when it is a "transformer" type unit. The transformer will get 'hot' due to inductive reactance. The other way around is ok. Ed.
 
Top