117 volts?

tc4b

tc4b

Yeah I been drinkin, SO!?
I'm currently bidding on a piece of rack gear, just checked in on it and noticed something in the description I'd missed, i says '117 volts.' Is that normal for US? If not, is there a converter? Seems like a weird thing to mention.
 
dont sweat it... the voltage across the country has changed a bit over time from roughly 110 to 120... no big deal.. if we were to have members from across the country check their voltage we would come up with a range of answers for any given day... if the voltage is stabile that's important... and the thing to really keep in mind is we're really dealing with the dc side of things... the first thing that happens inside is we donvert the ac to dc... and then we regulate it so it's a stabile voltage ...
 
US voltage is usually refered to as 110 or 120 but in reality 117 is the average voltage for most US homes.
 
Voltage really depends on so many factors. I will just name a few.

-Distance from step down transformer (the thing that converts the high voltage from power lines to 120/208 or 120/240 that feeds your house).
-How many times that feed is split for all dwellings on that grid.
-How well the electrician who wired your house designed the layout for balanced neutrals on all of the circuits.
-How many unbalanced loads, overloaded circuits, and even how many bends there are in the wire from the circuit breaker to the outlet.

There really are many transients that affect voltage potential but luckly most of our devices in this country operate within 108vac to 127vac. So minor variances as well as surges, spikes, and dips don't affect the "normal" operation on a day to day base. Allot of equipment lifespan could be extended if we could actually narrow that window down to a regulated voltage. In an ideal situation, you would balance the positive 60volt wave form on the hot side and the negative 60volt wave form on the neutral side, you would get a perfect wave form of 120 volts between hot and neutral.
 
dementedchord said:
dont sweat it... the voltage across the country has changed a bit over time from roughly 110 to 120... no big deal.. if we were to have members from across the country check their voltage we would come up with a range of answers for any given day... if the voltage is stabile that's important... and the thing to really keep in mind is we're really dealing with the dc side of things... the first thing that happens inside is we donvert the ac to dc... and then we regulate it so it's a stabile voltage ...
Click to expand...

Exactly. These days, the stability of the line voltage isn't that important because it's all converted to DC and fed into a switching regulator (or a linear regulator if you want to waste a lot of power :D) and you get a constant voltage anyway.

My voltage range swings from about 115 to as high as 129 on PG&E. I've never seen it exceed the 130VAC limit at which my UPS switches into panic mode and adds a downstep transformer to bring it back in check. In the reverse direction, I have, though. The lowest I ever saw was caused by water in the electric transformer a block from my house. Something like 65VAC. Needless to say, lights didn't work very well... but my big screen TV didn't care. :D
 
damn... im way surprised that would work.... granted it's probably got a switching supply... but with @50% of the expected voltage comming in i'm surprised the oscillator would work at all...
 
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