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Stop saying 110v/220v... it's 120v/240v

12K views 45 replies 28 participants last post by  patzoldfred09  
#1 ·
There is no such thing as 110v or 220v service anywhere in the world. When you talk appliances (such as chargers), please don't call them 110v or 220v. Those are 120v or 240v. Sure, you could see a few volts less than 120 or 240 at the outlets depending on the wiring and demand, but your service, outlets, and appliances are designed for 120v or 240v. If you see 110v or 220v at an outlet, you have a problem!

Mike
 
#2 ·
Really bothers you doesn't it Mike. ;) It's been used for years and although it might not be technically correct, everyone knows what someone means when they say they have 110 volt plugs in their house.

Maybe if someone measures 115 volts with a VOM on a 120 volt outlet they feel cheated but 115 volts on a 110 outlet feels great, like you are getting more than you should? :cool:
 
#3 ·
From Wikepedia

In the United States and Canada, national standards specify that the nominal voltage at the source should be 120 V and allow a range of 114 V to 126 V (RMS) (−5% to +5%). Historically 110 V, 115 V and 117 V have been used at different times and places in North America.
 
#4 ·
Most of Europe (and Africa, Asia, Australia, NZ etc.) uses 230V 50Hz as mains voltage. Usually within +-6% of it but +-10% can be allowed. American 240V appears to be a split-phase system, in comparison our (Finnish) residential supply is 3-phase 400V which gives 230V between any phase and neutral.

Europe used to have 220V and 240V systems, later those were standardized to 230V. Some areas of UK still have 250V but they fall in the +-10% 230V spec anyway...
 
#5 ·
Agreed, but at least it's close... my pet peeve is the large frequency of using kilowatts when you mean kilowatt-hours (and vice versa). Confusing power and energy in an enthusiast car forum... that's basically like confusing horsepower and gallons, they're totally different things!
 
#6 · (Edited)
and then you get into 3 phase power and its 120/208 volts so the 220 volt covers everything
so you know it will work on 240 as well as 208v
the 110 volt tells you that you can have a little more line loss (reduced voltage over longer building distances in wire resistance) and it will still function ok
 
#12 ·
Another one that bugs me to no end is . . . . "I just bought some rims"

A rim is that portion of a wheel that the tire is mounted to - Usually, you buy a wheel . . . . but there are a few instances where the wheel center and the rim are two different pieces, bolted together, so I guess if you had a wheel you really liked, but you dinged up the rim, maybe you could just buy the rims and have them bolted onto your old wheels??

Naaaw - That doesn't happen. Nobody buys 'rims' . . . . they buy wheels

Don
 
#14 ·
Too much OCD in this post. :p
 
#15 ·
Oh NO, I have 121 volts on my 209 Volt 3 phase system. YIKES!! If one lives in the country, voltage can get up to 130 V or as low as 100 volts depending on the utility company and how well the transformers are regulated and how they manage the load. Only if one is anal does it really matter - unless of course your light bulbs and other items burn out prematurely because your 110 volt bulbs are drawing too many watts. As for kilowatts, that is 1000 watts. As for Kilowatt Hours, that is = to 1000 watts in an hour. You are talking equivalency, regardless.
 
#25 ·
Oh NO, I have 121 volts on my 209 Volt 3 phase system. YIKES!! If one lives in the country, voltage can get up to 130 V or as low as 100 volts depending on the utility company and how well the transformers are regulated and how they manage the load. Only if one is anal does it really matter - unless of course your light bulbs and other items burn out prematurely because your 110 volt bulbs are drawing too many watts. As for kilowatts, that is 1000 watts. As for Kilowatt Hours, that is = to 1000 watts in an hour. You are talking equivalency, regardless.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO, this is the type of thing I'm talking about! That's not at all equivalent. You don't "use up watts in an hour", that's like saying "I used 100 horsepower in an hour". HP and kW are units of power, which is instantaneous, you don't use them over time, they are already units of "energy used over time" (a watt is a joule / second). You multiply power use by time to get energy used, so drawing 1kW or power sustained for an hour (very different than "in an hour") uses 1 kWh of energy.

/end rant

Then, read my license plate and weep, 'sherpa!
Ha, I actually like that! The cleverness makes up the for the technical inaccuracy :p
 
#16 · (Edited)
English is not Verilog, in English you don't have to be exactly correct because humans are intelligent, computers aren't. People understand context and are capable of inferring what someone says even if what they say isn't technically correct. It's fine to say charger instead of EVSE, everyone knows what you mean, it also makes more sense if you look at things as a black box. An EVSE looks like a scaled up phone charger, the fact that it passes AC through to the car and that the AC to DC conversion takes place within the car vs doing the conversion itself and passing DC is invisible to an observer, and completely irrelevant since the end result is the same, i.e. energy from the wall is converted into stored energy in the battery. If you say 60KW battery vs 60KWh battery nobody will misunderstand you, the energy stored in batteries is measured in kilowatt hours so in this context KW is merely shorthand for KWh, btw you would be technically correct if you stated the energy capacity of a battery in BTUs instead of KWhs but that would be confusing because nobody uses BTUs when describing electrical energy although it's common when describing the energy stored in a gallon of gasoline or a cubic foot of natural gas As for rims vs wheels, car wheels are commonly called rims, always have been, if you say rims people will always know that you are talking about the metal portion of the wheels.
 
#19 ·
True. It's all the time I save from not having to stop at gas stations: don't know what to do with that time. ;) Plus it's clear after posting this that I might be due for a name change. Thinking of changing my name to: A. Gnall. :D

Mike
 
#20 ·
For some odd reason, this thread made me think of something I once heard Click and Clack say ....

Whenever a Boston native says "caaaa", that missing "r" instantly migrates to Texas where someone says "time to change my oirl". This proves that consonants, like energy, are never really used up, only converted to another form.
 
#26 ·
LOL. I love it! I'm also glad that this thread seems to have been taken as a bit of tongue in cheek humor, which is how I meant it. We all know what people are talking about when someone says 110 so if it was something that really got under my skin, that's probably more of a "me" problem. ;) I was just brought up knowing the voltage to the panel is 120 and that's the closest to what you'll see in your house so I always scratch my head when people talk about 110. Hmm... there's a bald spot there... maybe I DO have a problem. :D

Mike
 
#32 ·
Of course we could get really technical and talk about real and imaginary currents ( yes there is such a thing).....
 
#39 ·
I like when I was taking transistor theory and the holes moved in the opposite direction to current flow. Been a very long time since I looked at that. But then again, it really doesn't matter in practical use.
 
#33 ·
Well, I went and looked and my Voltage out of the wall plug seems to spend VERY little time at 120 or 110 volts

we should do some type of RMS averaging.


I generally just say 117 Vac
 
#36 ·
One of the earlier posts correctly stated that there is a range of acceptable voltages for 120 V, 240V, 208V services. This is due to the loading of your local circuits, transformer sizing, impedance of the transformer at the street level as well as the high voltage distribution circuits and to some extent the transmission level circuits. When the load is high ( really hot day when all the AC demand is high, industrial load is high etc), the voltage will be at its lower limits, say 108-110. On a relatively cool night, or weekend, the load is lighter and the voltage can be 125V range. Poorly designed or overloaded areas or rural areas can have wider fluctuations. If you have voltage concerns that you house voltage is bad ( low voltage is a killer for AC compressors), your utility can have a recording device attached to record the range. This would be the first step in addressing any problems. I used to run a utility that had its own generation, transmission and distribution system right down to the customer level and know things can go wrong, especially in old or rapidly changing developments.
 
#40 ·
Back in the days before digital everything, I used to make color prints on photographic paper. I was too poor to afford a regulated power supply and the hardest part of the whole process was dealing with the color change of the light bulb. Incandescent bulbs are very sensitive to voltage, changing their color a lot. I got to where I'd test the voltage with a multimeter and adjust color filtration accordingly, but it often changed so quickly and so much that this was a poor strategy. Five volt swings were pretty common.
 
#41 ·
Most amateurs stuck to black and white because color was too difficult. I never knew what the issues were with color, aside from voltage changes effecting the light bulb, what other things were there that made color developing so hard?
 
#43 ·
Saying 110v shouldn't be an issue really. Part of the stubbornness isn't always the lack of knowledge. Our outlets don't say 120v on them. But OSHA/NRTL laws do require cord connected appliances to show their voltage rating. And there was a time when a lot of those cheap toasters and appliances from Japan and Taiwan had 110v specs on them which would typically cover 100v in Japan up to 120v in the US. And there ARE some countries that still use 110/220. Some are US territories.

Besides. Saying 110 is easier. One less syllable.