Electrical Cable Voltage Drop Calculator

Calculator

For a specified electrical cable or tether, this calculator finds the voltage drop for a given current through the cable or the current through the cable required for a given voltage drop. In ROVs and subsea robotics, this is useful to calculate the power loss and voltage drop through a tether cable, but it’s also useful in all sorts of other applications!

Wire Gauge or Area:

Enter the wire gauge, diameter, or circular area. (e.g. "16 AWG", "1.3 mm", "1.33 mm2", or "2580 cmil")

Number of Parallel Conductors in the Circuit:

Enter the number of conductors in parallel (default is 1).

Supply Voltage:

Enter the supply voltage. (e.g. "12 V")

Voltage Phase (not supported yet):

DC
AC

Cable Length or Distance:

Enter the one-way cable length or distance. (e.g. "50 m", "150 ft", or "1.5 km")

Load Current OR Voltage Drop:

Enter the load current OR desired voltage drop and the other will be calculated. (e.g. "1.0 A" or "2 V")

Link to these results

Output:

Cable Length

Learn More

This calculator uses the js-quantities library by gentooboontoo for unit conversions.

Authors

Rusty

Rusty is the founder and CEO of Blue Robotics. His background is in engineering but he likes to be involved in everything at Blue Robotics!