Electrical Question: 120 to 110 V

[Julie P.]

Hi, does anyone know if US electrical products will work in Jamaican outlets?

According to this website:

The US uses 120V/60Hz, and Jamaica uses 110V/50Hz.

Both countries use identical physical outlet/plug shapes.

Thanks!

Julie

[RBM]

[Tony Hwang]

Hi, What do you want to use specifically over there? Voltage is not a problem. being 50Hz means some power supply transformers can run warmer. Tony

[meirman]

In alt.home.repair on Tue, 15 Mar 2005 00:43:45 GMT Tony Hwang posted:

And clocks won't keep good time, at least the ones that run on motors.

(They actually keep track, I'm told, at the generating plant to make sure the average frequency is exactly 60Hz, so that clocks will keep time well.)

Meirman

-- If emailing, please let me know whether or not you are posting the same letter. Change domain to erols.com, if necessary.

[m Ransley]

It depends on what you run , some things need 60hz. Id also be concerned that their 110 drops to 100 or below your apliances requirements. Bring a volt- Hz meter, a Kill A Watt. Voltage-hz requirements are often printed on equipment or in manuals.

[Doug Miller]

And I'm not too sure I'd want to try to run a computer on a 50 Hz supply.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?

[Julie P.]

Thanks Tony! I want to send someone some ultrasonic pest repellers. They are small appliances, the size of a fist or hand. You plug them into an outlet, and they emit ultrasonic signals to scare away mice and ants. They click every few seconds and flash a small red indicator light. they don't draw a lot of power.

J.

[Julie P.]

Thanks!

J.

[Beachcomber]

More than just a simple, one line answer is needed here...

...Sometimes more than just warmer.... Some appliances will smoke and burn out when plugged into 50 Hz vs. 60 Hz, even though the voltage is the same. (I saw this happen to a word processor typewriter once.) The inductive reactance in the primary of the transfomer is less at the lower frequency, hence more current and more heat....

Computers, especially laptops are generally safe as they often have "universal" power supplies that accept anywhere from 100 - 250 volts,

50 or 60 Hz.

Desktop computers often have a switch on the power supply to select between 120 V. 60 Hz and 220 V. 50 Hz. A replacement cordset is often needed to fit the foreign sockets, though.

For small electronics like recorders and handheld radios, you can buy

3-6-9-12 VDC wall wart power supplies that plug into the foreign countries outlets. 12 VDC is 12 VDC anywhere in the world.

Clocks may or may not be sensitive. The older electric gear driven clocks are frequency sensitive and will not work properly. Certain electronic digital display clocks (Radio Shack?) use the power line frequency as a reference and hence will not work, yet others will run fine as they have in internal crystal timebase.

Heating appliances generally do not care about frequency unless they have some electronics associated with them (The electronic timer in a coffeepot, for example).

Beachcomber

[Roger Shoaf]

According to a electronics whiz friend of mine the power supply in a PC can handle just about any countries power.

[w_tom]

[HeyBub]

To scare away insects? In Jamaica?

They BREED faster than you can scare them off (even if the electronic thingy worked).

You'll have better luck sending a cat. Much better.