Misconseptions about power/voltage usage

[captaincascade]

Recently, i recieved a email from a friend. This person spoke about, how they prefered 115v as aposed to 208 because he believed that the higher voltage would consume more power. And therefore increase his power bill.

Im not exactly an electrician, but as best im aware,. It works like this:

Increased voltage= less amps (under equal load ect..)
lower voltage= higher amps (under equal load ect..)


The voltage is always there. That is not a factor. The amount of amps a piece of equipment consumes determines the power consumption.

For example...
The revco -80c freezers i work on come in both 115 and 220. It is not rare for a 115v units first stage to draw 7 amps running. While the 220v units first stage will only draw 3 amps.

This also effects compressor life. The 220 units compressors have a much longer life span statisticly speaking.

Please feel free to correct where im wrong.

[inferno_gr]

Lower voltage shouldnt consume less power, it is like that:
voltage x amps=watt if you convert 115v to 220v with a transformer it will drain double+ the amps from the input from what you ll drain from the output, the plus is for the losses on the transformer.
Actually higher voltage causes lower losses in wires because volt drop across a wire is current / resistance.
Higher voltage means less losses in wires but that is only importand in very big length wires, copper wire resistence is very small but indeed 115v have double losses in wires than 220v
Power companies use very high voltages for bring electricity from long distance to a city and the voltage is lowered for use inside the city.
Forgive my pure english.