Aboutcleggsan Expertise All technical areas of Electronics Engineering.
Experience BSEE, MBA, Design, R&D, University Research.
Senior Life Member of IEEE. Life Fellow of AES.
Organizations IEEE, Consumer Electronics Society, Audio Engineering Society.
Broad teaching experience; work experience mostly in consumer electronics and conversion from analog to digital technologies. Pioneer in digital audio at all levels.
Expert: cleggsan Date: 12/25/2006 Subject: Voltage Drop Effects
Question Let say according to design I have to install a cable with voltage drop 5V/m. For a distance about 300m.This is just an example. But I purposely choose a cable with voltage drop :
less than 5V/m ie 3V/m
more than 5V/m ie and 7V/m
What are the consequences for this installation. What are the effects for wrongly choosing the voltage drop.
Answer Simple, the voltage drop will be more or less, depending on what gauge wiring you are using.
The voltage drop is a function of current. A cable or wire is pure resistance. The drop is simply current times the resistance of the cable for the distance.
Chances are you are not running the maximum current through a wire at any given time and the voltage drop will be much less than what you think. Most voltage drop ratings are maximum, meaning that is the most amount of current that you should ever run or the wires will overheat and begin to melt the insulation.
So, voltage drop is really not a very good specification to use; you should never run anywhere near the voltage drop current because it is too dangerous in the long run.
You should, in most cases, use a big gage wire that will run very conservative with a very low voltage drop so that the voltage arriving at the end is as close that at the send as possible.
Does this make sense? Let me know if you need more.
Cleggsan
