You definitely can use your 120 Volt appliances in Europe. If you live on base housing, I believe 110V is supplied to your home. I never lived on base in Europe so I’m relying on what others have told me. (Please leave a comment if you know)

If you don’t have direct plugs for 120V, you’ll have to use a transformer. These range in sizes from small (100 Watt) up to 2000 Watts or higher. To estimate how big of a transformer you’ll need, you need to do some simple math:

Watts = Volts x Amps

For example:

My scanner is 120V and 850mA. mA are Milli-Amps, or 1000th’s of an Amp. So

850mA = 0.850 Amps

So for my scanner, I need:

Watts = 120V x 0.850 = 102 Watts

If you had a 5 Amp appliance, you would need:

Watts = 120 Volts times 5 Amps = 600 Watts

You always need MORE Watts than you calculate!

If your appliance does heating (microwave oven for instance), expect it to use a LOT of watts. 1500+ is not unusual. Most electrical appliances have a surge of power demand when you first turn them on. For this reason, I ALWAYS leave a good margin of extra capacity in my transformers.

For example:

I have three appliances I need to power with a transformer. Their wattage requirements are:

102 Watts
250 Watts
100 Watts
———–
452 Watts total

You COULD use a 500 Watt transformer. I personally would like to use a 750 Watt or 1000 Watt transformer for this combination.

Some things to know about transformers:

• They are heavy

  Transformers are wound coils of metal inside.  The bigger the wattage capacity, the more coils and the heavier it is.  I have a 2000 Watt transformer that weighs probably 15 pounds.  (I’m guessing)

  I once was carrying a 1500 Watt transformer by the handle and one of the two attaching rivets to the handle broke.  The transformer fell and chipped the stone stair I was on at the time.  I always try to carry heavy transformers without the handle now.  I’m probably paranoid, but that’s from a previous bad experience.

• They are expensive

  Higher capacity transformers can cost over $100. You can find them for sale in the classified ads as people PCS and sell them all of the time. The Thrift shops also carry transformers.

• They use fuses

  This always frustrates me. WHY can’t transformers use circuit breakers? If the fuse blows, you have to hope you have a replacement on hand. The Base Exchanges sell fuses at the register. They are very inexpensive but you need to have spares!

• They draw power on demand

  When I first arrived in Europe, everyone told me that a 1000 Watt transformer always drew 1000 Watts of power from the electric company even if you weren’t using it’s full capacity. I suspected this wasn’t correct so I wrote to several transformer companies. One wrote back and confirmed my suspicion: Transformers only use the power they are asked to provide plus a very tiny amount to control the transformer. In other words, if the appliances you’ve connected to your transformer are off and the transformer is on, it’s basically like having a night light on.

  So don’t worry about turning the transformer on and off if you aren’t using the connected appliances. To me, the risk of blowing that fuse is worth paying for the trickle current into the transformer.

I hope this helps you understand transformers a bit better. They are easy to use and help you avoid spending a lot of money on 220V appliances that you’ll only use for the time you’re in Europe.

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