Line Regulation for Dummies

line regulation

Along about 2012, the number of "titles" available for eHow.com's contributors began to dry up, perhaps as a response to Google's Panda update in fall of 2011. Whatever the case, the more desperate freelancers began wandering further and further afield from their areas of expertise (assuming they ever inhabited that area in the first place). As a consequence, the more esoteric the question, the more likely it was that someone totally unqualified to address it would "answer" it, in the process getting even the basic facts wrong. You know, something like James Wiley trying to tell people "How to Calculate Line Regulation" for Hunker.com.

Wiley, already a three-time DotD who'd demonstrated a broad range of ignorance, plunged ahead on a query so removed from his fields (global studies and Spanish with an affinity for script-writing) as to be laughable. Hell, nobody here understands the question all that well, so it's no surprise that some J-school or English Lit grad acting as a gatekeeper ("content editor") let his submission through. Here's how he started out:

"Line regulation is defined as the percent of voltage variation derived from the voltage output of a given circuit or current."

Well, no, James, it's not. According to Wikipedia,

"Line regulation is the ability of a power supply to maintain a constant output voltage despite changes to the input voltage."

With perhaps the exception of the word "voltage," not one single thing in Wiley's "definition" is correct. He compounds this dumbassery by explaining that,

"Currents and circuits should be measured around a house from time to time to determine whether the line regulation is too high for a given section."

The notion of measuring a "circuit" notwithstanding, Jimmy-boy's point expressed there is precisely backward: the purpose of line regulation is maintaining near-constant voltage, so it's beyond ridiculous to claim that line regulation can be "too high"!

By the time Wiley gets to his simple calculation example, in which he posits a voltage of 25V and a variation of 12%, he's managed to display utter ignorance of both common voltages (120 and 240) and of likely variability in voltage (0.5%).

When someone contributes so mightily to the stupidification of the internet, we feel wholly justified in naming him our Dumbass of the Day. You go, Jimmy...

SI - ELECTRICAL