December 20, 2023

VA to Amps Calculator

Short on Time? Here’s The Article Summary

The article explains the relationship between volts, amps, and watts in electrical circuits, focusing on converting volt-amps (VA) to amps. It describes volts as the pressure in an electrical circuit and amps as the flow of current. It mentions Ohm's law and Watt's law, which relate volts, amps, and watts.

Watt's law states that power (in watts) equals volts multiplied by amps. To convert VA to amps, you divide the VA by the volts. Understanding these units is crucial for calculating power requirements, such as for solar systems. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of understanding these units before performing calculations for various electrical needs.

Introduction

When faced with other calculators like one that converts kVa to amps, the best approach is to see what values you have and understand the relationship between the units.

To understand the conversion from VA to amps, we need to break down the units of power used in the equation. In this case, it’d be volts and amps.

Volts
Amps
Watts
What is VA

Volts

convert va to amps

When we’re looking at an electrical circuit and hear the word voltage, we’re really talking about pressure.

There are tiny charges inside the wires throughout the circuit. When voltage is applied from one side of the wire, it effectively pushes the electricity through the circuit.

This is also known as the “potential difference” or the “change in pressure.”

For electrical equations, voltage is represented with a ‘V’, whereas an ‘E’ is used for the electromotive calculations.

In the solar world, volts can help us determine our solar needs as well as sizing the battery or solar-powered generator for our solar system.

Amps

Amperage is the flow of current from one point to another. It’s more of the strength of the field than anything else.

Amps form the basis of knowing how to scale your solar system adequately through RV amp hour calculators or a home power consumption calculator.

1 amp is equivalent to 1 coulomb per second, in case you’re only given coulombs to work with.

But what happens when we bring these two units of power together?

Volts and Amps have one relationship shared between two laws.

The first is Ohm’s law which shows the relationship between ohms, volts, and amps, whereas Watt’s law incorporates power into the relationship.

It’s because of watt’s law that we can easily convert volts to amps, and vice versa. But we can also achieve the value of watts.

Watts

how to convert va to amps

The watt is the derived unit for power that describes the rate at which work is done on an object. It’s equivalent to one joule of work being done on an object per second.

Watt’s law tells us that power is equal to the current multiplied by the voltage. In other words, watts are equal to volts multiple by amps.

W = V x A

This law is typically shown in a triangle separated into 3 parts representing the 3 different units of power.

Watts are at the top, amps are at the bottom left, and volts are at the bottom right.

If you want to obtain a specific unit, we cover that unit and either multiply or divide the units we have remaining.

Let’s say we want to use a house amp calculator to see where most of the power is being drawn from various appliances.

If we don’t have the amps of an appliance but only have watts and volts, we can calculate the amperage by diving the watts by the voltage.

So now that we’ve understood the units of power, we can look at how to convert VA to amps.

What is VA

As much as volts multiplied by amps will give you the wattage, it will also return another value. If you’re given root mean square voltage or amps, multiplying them together will give you apparent power.

volt amps calculator

It all depends on what values you have and what you’re wanting to work out. The relationship between RMS voltage, amps, and watts remains the same.

So if you’re given an apparent power of 54VA and an RMS voltage of around 6V, we can determine the amps by dividing the 54VA by 6V to give us 9A.

If we use the formula of VA = V x A, we’ll be able to calculate any value so long as we have 2 known values.

Conclusion

Whether we want to convert milliamps to amps, or VA to amps, we must understand the units as individuals before rushing into calculations.

If we better understand the variables, obtaining the product is a matter of simple multiplication or division.

It doesn’t end here, though. There are plenty more steps to take on your solar power journey. Check out our battery kWh calculator or the article on converting mAh to Ah to find out everything you need to know.

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Article by

Cody Oehm

Cody is the Head of Marketing at Shop Solar, and joined the company in spring of 2022.

He has an entrepreneurial background and has been in the ecommerce industry since 2015. With 4 businesses under his belt and a drive to make a bigger impact, he decided to team up with Shop Solar on their mission to make solar simple and affordable. You can browse best seller's here.