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Every conductor has some resistance, so a little voltage is always lost pushing current along a cable — that loss is the voltage drop. For a single-phase run the drop is Vdrop = 2 × ρ × L × I / A, where the factor 2 accounts for the current travelling out to the load and back along the return conductor; a three-phase run uses √3 instead of 2. Here ρ is the resistivity of the metal (copper ≈ 0.0175 Ω·mm²/m, aluminium ≈ 0.0282 Ω·mm²/m), L is the one-way length in metres, I the load current in amps and A the conductor cross-section in mm². This calculator also reports the resulting percentage drop, the voltage actually delivered at the load and the power wasted as heat in the cable (Ploss = Vdrop × I).

As a worked example, take 20 A flowing 50 m one-way through a 10 mm² copper cable on a 230 V single-phase supply: Vdrop = 2 × 0.0175 × 50 × 20 / 10 = 3.5 V, about 1.5%, so the load sees roughly 226.5 V and the cable wastes 3.5 × 20 = 70 W. Switch the conductor to aluminium and the same run drops about 5.6 V, because aluminium’s resistivity is around 60% higher. You can either type a custom cross-section or pick a standard AWG gauge from the advanced list, which overrides the area field with the gauge’s real mm² value.

Voltage drop matters because motors, lights and electronics misbehave when they are starved of voltage — dim lamps, sluggish motors and nuisance tripping all trace back to oversized drops on long runs. Electricians size cables so total drop stays within about 3% for branch circuits and 5% end-to-end; the result here flags whether your run meets the limit you set, and the fix for a failing run is a larger conductor, a shorter route or, occasionally, a higher supply voltage.