How voltage drops over long distances

Usually in the controls business, you try to locate your controllers as close as possible to
the devices they are controlling. Sometimes thats not doable, like in the case where you
have rooftop units in a cold climate. Controllers cant handle below freezing
temperatures, so you have to locate the controllers somewhere in the building, maybe
hundreds of feet away. How do you know that the resistance of a long run of wire wont
cause a voltage drop bad enough to cause problems?
As you probably know, a long enough wire run will cause a voltage drop, but it has to be
pretty long to cause any problems. A voltage drop on a signal coming back to a Voltage
Input from a sensor will cause the reading to be inaccurate. The National Electrical Code
contains tables for figuring this out, but heres a couple of ways of doing it on your own.
You have to know the length and resistance of the wire, the source voltage, and the
maximum current of the circuit. Heres a web site that can give you the resistance of
light gauge wires: http://www.cirris.com/testing/resistance/wire.html
Most 24 volt control wire is 18 AWG, and according to the above mentioned website, the
resistance of 18 gauge wire is .00639 Ohms per foot. Since the maximum current on a
Computrols Professional controller 24VDC Binary Output is 50mAmps, well use that as
the current. Lets look at the formula and circuit diagram:


In this example, lets go with a wire distance of 1000, which is probably more distance
than youll ever have to run. The variables are: V1 =24VDC; R =0.00639/Ft.; L =
1000; I =0.05 Amps.
24 (2 x 1000 x 0.00639 x 0.05) =24 - 0.639 =23.361 Volts at End
As you can see, the voltage at the end is still over 23 Volts, so 1000 should not be a
problem powering a device. Even at 2000, the voltage drop is just 1.278 Volts.
In the case of powering a long line of VAV controllers from one transformer, it would be
very complicated to calculate the voltage drop. Computrols recommends that you use a
28V transformer to compensate for any voltage drop.
You probably dont have to worry about voltage drops when powering a device or relay
as in the above example, but a Voltage Input could pose an accuracy problem. We
recommend the use of Voltage-to-Current converters or 4-20mA transmitter. This also
makes it noise immune from nearby 60Hz sources.
In the case of a long run to a thermistor, we also suggest using a 4-20mA device instead
of a plain thermistor. No matter what the resistance due to wire length, the current will
remain constant.