What's a commonly produced thing that's 48v? I don't know much about this subject. Is it most industrial type stuff or is there consumer tier products using it?
Basically the whole telco industry runs off 48V, and has for a very long time. You'd have a rectifier box that would take the AC and output 48V, and then everything would run from that.
A lot of the satellite and wireless equipment I've worked on has inherited that and runs off 48 too.