Hello Gunnar,
my application is a Staircase lighting time switches (hopefully) designed for low power. Right now the whole circuit consumes less then 50mW at 230VAC/50Hz. "Less then" should mean: I do not trust my meters which say 21mW (I'm waiting for a special standby power meter). The PIC micro is always running with 4MHz, maybe I can find a way to let the PIC goes to sleep mode. I'm not sure about that, because the PIC is filtering some annoying glitches and spikes from the main line to determine if someone pressed a switch or not.
So, to sense the main line consume ~5mW. Hugh, this is 25% of the overall power. Maybe, I'm not so wrong to start thinking about a better/other sense circuit.
I'm open for other ideas, therefore I will check the capacitor divider. Keep you informed.
Regards,
Andreas