Any difference between Line - Neutral and Line - Line hookup?

apestate · Sep 16, 2014

General electric question here...

To clarify, I've got some DIN mount power supplies for 5v and 12v. Their rated input is 120-240VAC 60hz. I'd like to supply 208 from our Y connected service, line-to-line. The input of the power supplies says "L" and "N" and in general I am wondering if there's any difference at all between an appliance designed for two hots and a ground vs. one designed for a hot, a neutral, and a ground?

sfriedberg · Sep 16, 2014

Not in practical terms. Both hots and neutrals are current carrying conductors, and neither should be connected to ground. (Neutrals are connected to ground at exactly one location, the supply.) It would be very good practice to connect the N on the supply to the central neutral line of your Y service. But if you had a supply with L1 and L2, either of those would connect to your Y neutral.

Now if you had an appliance with two hots and a neutral (e.g., 115/230V) there could indeed be a big difference, especially if you wanted to power it from a 3-phase supply.

sfriedberg · Sep 16, 2014

Actually, I see I didn't read your question closely enough. Those L-N or L1-L2 supplies will work just fine across two lines of your Y service, too.

apestate · Sep 16, 2014

We're doing a prototype build and to be clever I tied us to 208V across the board instead of bringing the neutral along. Thanks for the backup, I was understanding it but started to get worried.

Tony Quiring · Sep 17, 2014

About 120 vac...

The label indicates a voltage range.

This is due to creating a switch mode supply that can be used everywhere with only power cord specific to market.

So as long as the voltage is within the range indicated it does not care

Vladymere gr · Sep 18, 2014

Would there not be a switch or jumper setting to designate the supply as 208VAC input or 120VAC input? That has been my esperience with slectable input voltage power supplies.

Vlad

sfriedberg · Sep 18, 2014

Vladymere, it's not unusual these days to encounter supplies rated for as much as 90-275V input range, without any need for jumpering. Obviously, these are active power supplies (e.g., switchers), not old-school transformer-rectifier-filter supplies.

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