Originally Posted by
Gil_J
Rick, if you have 138V you will have early appliance failure. Split-phase power supplied by power companies will generally be between 115V and 125V. Below 105V and above 130V is outside the design criteria of most products and the standards set by power companies. Most inverters will go into self protection mode below 105V and above 130V.
Thanks Gil, I was lead to believe the same thing until I looked at the back of all my appliances in my house, in my bus and at home depot, most of them say " operating voltage 125VAC +/- 15% " some say 120VAC +/- 10%. So 135+15%=143.75VAC
This was very confusing to me and I started asking all of electrical engineers I know, and got 25 different answers, basically they all said that unless I was planning on using an old antique console TV or record player with 1940 and 1950 electronics that I would be fine unless the power panel I was going thru had some kind of specif voltage cut off as a protection.
So after a few days of thinking, I went back and asked why ?, Why is it OK to run higher voltages, the answer was very simple, when an electrical engineer or designer build an circuit board or radio or what ever, they use exact specification for values on all of the components like resistor and capacitors. Then when the part is mass produced, to keep cost down, the mass producer will always use higher voltage value components because they are cheaper.
So to test this theory, I took an old standard refrigerator, 120vac and started applying more and more voltage to it to see when the " magic Smoke " came out, I increased the voltage 10 volts at a time and let the thing run for 1 hour at each step, the refer gave up at 185VAC. I was shocked.
I ran the same test on a 15 year old cobra cb radio I had laying around, it popped at 28VDC.
So when I told my electrical guys that I had 135 coming into my house, they all got very envious and called me lucky, not understanding my new found fame, I said why? and of course they looked at me like I was and Idiot, and now I see why.
Ohms law, when voltage is increased, amps are decreased, by having 135 line voltage my current use is less, and we pay for current not voltage, so my electric bill is about 10% lower than the same volume of amps at 110 volts.
So I show 134VAC in my bus, with the autoformer inline I show 136VAC, when I turn on everything in the coach, including the stove, I only show a 4 volt drop in voltage. the only way I can do this is with this voltage, if I want to any RV park, I would pop the breaker.
2000 Prevost Liberty H3-45 Hamden Edtion