Why choose 120 volts?

Wed May 27 01:06:49 UTC 2009

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 12:39:10PM -0700, Seth Mattinen wrote:
> I have a pure curiosity question for the NANOG crowd here. If you run
> your facility/datacenter/cage/rack on 120 volts, why?
> 
> I've been running my facility at 208 for years because I can get away
> with lower amperage circuits. I'm curious about the reasons for using
> high-amp 120 volt circuits to drive racks of equipment instead of
> low-amp 208 or 240 volt circuits.
> 
> ~Seth

I love 208V but I have to fight almost everytime with our datacenter
provider. They got 50 or so "Colo's" which are all cookie cutter. Then
there is our datacenter, the only facility where they can deliver
3-phase and monitor actual power usage. Everytime when we ask for 3-phase
it is a fight now. Our latest circuits (50-amp although we won't use more
than 16A under normal use (A+B load)), took me 9 months to get out of
them. :-(

-- 
Regards, Ulf.

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Ulf Zimmermann, 1525 Pacific Ave., Alameda, CA-94501, #: 510-865-0204
You can find my resume at: http://www.Alameda.net/~ulf/resume.html