Yeah, it makes so much sense to have many different voltages across your domestic installations…
It’s dumb as fuck, but you lot are stuck with it
Comment on Why are plug sockets region locked?
OwOarchist@pawb.social 3 days agoUS voltages are stupid and pathetically inefficient
US runs on 240V, just like the UK. Pretty much every house in the US has 240V available. But we use split phase power for lower-power appliances, so most plugs in the house are wired to get only half that power – 120V.
Really, there’s only a few appliances in a house that really benefit at all from the higher voltage: electric ovens, electric clothes dryers, (sometimes) electric heaters, and water-boiling kettles.
For ovens and clothes dryers (if electric), US houses almost always have 240V outlets wired specifically for those.
Electric heaters are often wired for 240V if they’re built in to the house. (But movable, portable space heaters are almost always 120V.)
The only odd one out is the tea kettle. But tea is a lot less popular in the US anyway, so not many houses have one in the first place. And the ones who do … just kind of deal with their water taking 6 minutes to boil instead of 3 minutes. Not worth re-wiring an entire country (entire continent, really) just to boil your tea a little faster. The switchover would be chaos, would result in a lot of things being made obsolete earlier than necessary, and would suddenly require a ton of inefficient voltage step-down adapters for people who didn’t want to throw away all their existing 120V appliances.
FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world 3 days ago
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 3 days ago
Same in Europe. 240V and 380V.
FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world 3 days ago
There’s a difference between the madness of 'Murica and having single phase and three-phase power in an installation
greyscale@lemmy.grey.ooo 3 days ago
Never seen 380v in a residential setting. I know theres a circuit for it in my building for the elevator.
fullsquare@awful.systems 3 days ago
the entire point of three phase circuit is that you can split it into single phase circuits without using too much wire. usually block will be wired so that 1/3 of flats is connected to one phase, but if you need to power big loads like ag tools or something like concrete mixer three phase supply can be done (415V these days, there’s upward shift in voltage)
Successful_Try543@feddit.org 2 days ago
Usually in normal households, the electric stove is connected (hard wired) to all three phases (while the individual heating elements use only 230 V) to distribute it’s load.
Some people may use three-phase connectors for heavy duty tools, such as welding machines, electric saws or log splitters.
fullsquare@awful.systems 3 days ago
blame edison for that
FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world 3 days ago
He really was a dickhead
kboos1@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I don’t think you know what you’re talking about. Lots of countries split voltages in just every single building because it’s expensive not to.
FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Well fuck me, I guess being in the electrical industry for a quarter of a century doesn’t carry any weight, oh internet expert
kboos1@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Also 25 years in the electrical industry wiring and running conduit for 25 years while working through night school to become a PE. Just because you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. Good luck to you bud
fullsquare@awful.systems 3 days ago
in EU there are really only two standards. for single phase loads up to 3.8kW, regular 16A plug is sufficient. above that, 3-phase 5-pin 32A plug (most common of them) is used which can deliver up to 23kW. there are common variants of 3-phase 5-pin plugs rated up to 125A that can deliver up to 89kW, and uncommon up to 800A variants that are also part of the standard, but it delivers up to 0.57MW and it’s a bit silly
OwOarchist@pawb.social 3 days ago
The wiring in the wall can handle 125A or even 800A?! What the fuck wire gauge are you guys using over there?
fullsquare@awful.systems 3 days ago
50mm^2 for 125A, just under 8mm diameter solid copper rod if it was solid copper rod. but it’s stranded so it’s a bit bulkier than that, bundled five per cable so also squished into a wedge. it adds up to some 4cm in diameter
towerful@programming.dev 3 days ago
150mm^2 obviously (tho only for 400A). Don’t know that I’ve ever seen 800 amp powerlock, I guess they would be 240mm^2 and above.
I think they are talking about more industrial/commercial applications that use ceeforms or powerlock for 1 or 3 phase: 16A, 32A, 63A, 125A. Anything over that is powerlock, and I don’t know if any single phase powerlock.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 3 days ago
The thing is… Europe also uses split phase. You get three phase power coming in at 380V in most houses on the, 415 in the UK. The 240V is what you get on a single phase.
fullsquare@awful.systems 3 days ago
split phase is 2-phase system but everyone else uses 3-phase distribution. in reality americans also use 3-phase distribution, this is where 207v 3-phase comes from (it’s 120v phase to neutral)
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 3 days ago
Ah I didn’t know about 2 phase systems. In my corner of Europe you’re on either 3 phases or 1 phase. 1 phase gets you 240V, 3 phases gets you 380V + ability to have different consumers on different phases to distribute the load if your house’s wired for that.
I’ve got a few outlets in my house that take this type of plug:
Image
Built in the 80s so grandpa got soviet plugs lol
OwOarchist@pawb.social 3 days ago
This is standard for US wiring – circuit breaker panels are designed to alternate which phase is fed to which circuit, with each circuit being the opposite phase from its neighbors.
blackbeans@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
Europe doesn’t use split phase.
US split phase uses a local transformer to split a phase voltage in half. We don’t have such a complication. We use just the three phases that are transported all the way from the power plant.
The phases are 120⁰ apart. The voltages between the phases is 400V and the voltage from any phase to neutral is 230V (all voltages ± 10%).
380V is a decades old standard from the time when different European countries still had minor voltage differences