Two New Yorkers spend six months 18 months!?! in Bangalore and other places in India.

Friday, July 13, 2007

Voltage Stabilizer


When we got back to our apartment in Bangalore, we found that this little monster had been hooked up to our refrigerator and placed on the cupboard above it. Before we left, the boxy thing had just been lying unplugged on a shelf in the storage room. Sometimes we'd look and it and wonder if we should have been doing something with it, but its bulk meant that we just left it sitting there.

All the thing does is what its name implies: massage the sometimes wildly varying local voltage into something more constant and easier for large appliances to deal with.

I hate the stabilizer. It extends out from the cupboard, so the doors have to stay open a little. Even worse, it makes fast-paced noises that are somewhere between noisy typing and a bug zapper that's just killed a bunch of gnats. As you can see, this model dates from long ago, and I doubt that more modern versions are as annoying.

Now I'm wondering I should have my laptop charging using one of these things. Probably I should, but since it's gone a year without one, I'm not in a huge hurry.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, that voltage stabilizer thing is ancient. All that clicking is from the servo motors and relays in that beast. Modern ones are usually electronic and pretty silent at that.

Your laptop adapter should be able to handle the mains voltage swings. They are pretty rugged things, but you never know.