Foreign Country Votages and Cycles

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rodneyl

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I have a customer that wants us to make a machine run in the U.S., Japan & Germany. Anyone know of any reliable power information for these parts of the world. From what I can tell they have 100 volts 50hz in Japan, 230volts 50hz in Germany. It is unclear whether or not the German voltage is (2) hot legs like here in the states or one hot leg and one zero potential leg.

Any help would be greatly appreciated...
Rodney
 
Re: Foreign Country Votages and Cycles

Here is an interesting site that has more answers than you have posted questions. But it does not answer your question about the 230 (or is it 220?) volts being phase to phase or phase to ground.

Electricity Around the World.
 
Re: Foreign Country Votages and Cycles

Post your question HERE

Roger
 
Re: Foreign Country Votages and Cycles

The German system is 230/400V @ 50Hz. This means that you have 230V to ground and 400V between any two hot legs. Normally you can't rely on the neutral being neutral and the hot leg being hot as the plug can be reversed in the outlet.

The Japanese system is very similar to the American: 100/200V with 100V to ground. One part of the country (the south I think) is 60 Hz and the other 50 Hz.

That is what happens when you buy power plants from different parts of the world. :)

Why 100V and not 110-120V? Someone said it was choosen as a nice round number that also fit with the metric system being introduced at the time... I don't know if it is true.

P.S. Even I have a little information on my webpage www.global-electron.com

[ September 19, 2005, 05:08 AM: Message edited by: c-h ]
 
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