Voltage question, new electric setup. Did I get lucky or am I screwed?

[jkcolo]

Howdy all. Need some of you guys' expert electrical advice. Just built a new electric brewery in my garage. I had the nema 14-50 outlet installed with 50A GFCI breaker and treated myself to 3 new Spike kettles and the Auber Brewbuddy II. So far couldn't be happier. Runs great, brewed twice without a hitch. But I may have committed a huge blunder! I live in a newer multi-unit building (built 2005) in a townhouse with my own electric meter and panel and my own 2-car garage. I assumed that my house had 240V service since it is newer but after some research it seems each townhouse has 120/208V single phase power. I noticed on the Brewbuddy voltmeter I was only showing between 208-212V when running. I checked my Nema 14-50 outlet and sure enough it reads 208V between the two hot wires. Each hot wire vs. neutral or ground shows the normal 120V.

So since everything seems to function normally I assume the electronics in the control panel will work ok but I'll only get 208V to the heating elements instead of 240V. But I'm no expert when in comes to the inner workings of these panels. I called Auber tech support and they seemed to agree but of course offered no guarantees. They said they don't test their panels with this type of power setup yadda yadda and can't be sure how stable my building power is and so forth.

Yeah my mistake... So I guess the question is: is this going to continue to work or am I looking at some future problems?

I'll enclose a few pics. Thanks for any replies.

 

[GoeHaarden]

What watt elements are you using? What amp draw do said elements pull?

I'm pretty novice when it comes to electrical but I always thought 208v was 2 phase thus being 120 degrees out of phase create the dip in voltage. Whereas 240v single phase is 180 degrees out of phase. Im probably wrong.

I might be completely way off but I think it's okay from a safety standpoint as long as you don't draw too many amps, but that's what your breakers are for. However, your elements might be underpowered as opposed to running them on 240v.

Again, don't trust me!! Haha

 

[jkcolo]

I got the 5500W elements and they've been drawing about 20A.

 

[Lynxpilot]

https://diyallday.com/208-vs-240-volt/

 

[doug293cz]

Your panel should work fine with 208V. The only problem might be if any of your contactor coils in the panel are 240V rated, the contact points in the contactors don't care. The EZBoils in the Brewbuddy, and the elements don't really care what voltage you feed them.

A 5500W element has a resistance of about 10.5 ohms, and the formula for power in a resistor is: P = V^2 / R. So, at 240V you get 240^2 / 10.5 = 5486W, but at 208V you get 208^2 / 10.5 = 4120W. So, your max power is (5486 - 4120) / 5486 = 25% less.

Brew on

 

[doug293cz]

What watt elements are you using? What amp draw do said elements pull?

I'm pretty novice when it comes to electrical but I always thought 208v was 2 phase thus being 120 degrees out of phase create the dip in voltage. Whereas 240v single phase is 180 degrees out of phase. Im probably wrong.

I might be completely way off but I think it's okay from a safety standpoint as long as you don't draw too many amps, but that's what your breakers are for. However, your elements might be underpowered as opposed to running them on 240v.

Again, don't trust me!! Haha

240V is single phase. If you split it into 2-120V (to ground) legs (this is done by the transformer on the pole), they are 180° out of phase. Household 208V is also single phase, that comes from taking any 2 legs of a 3 leg (3 phase) 208V supply. Each of the 3 legs is 120V to ground, but they are 120° out of phase. If you add together 2-120V legs that are 120° out of phase, the result is single phase at 208V.

With 3 phase 208 coming into a multi-unit building, you would wire phases 1 & 2 to 1/3 of the units, 2 & 3 to 1/3 of the units, and 1 & 3 to the last third of the units, in order to keep loads on all three phases balanced.

Brew on

 

[jkcolo]

Thanks guys for the info!