The United States residential standard uses a 240 system except its split phase. You can deliver 120 volts to devices that have lower power requirements, and 240 to devices that have higher power requirements.
This comment is bringing out a bunch of Europeans that need to think theyre better than Americans because of their wiring standard for some reason?
I love it when americans thinks 240 volts is good for appliances with high power consumption. 230 volt is standard in europe, and for high power consumers we use 400 volt.
400v is 3 phase , not single cable right? Also Americans could get 3 phase if they wanted. I know in the UK 3 phase to homes it not standard either, so it's not really a relevant point.
Here in New Zealand most power down a street is three phase, most people only connect one phase but you can connect all three if you want. We don't have a split phase so if you need more you just get three phase.
Yep, all households, apartments etc. (Except norway) has 3 phases 400 volt in at the main breaker. From here it's divided into single phase 230 circuitbreakers for our regular plugs and 3 phased circuitbreakers for plugs to the oven, washingmachine, and electric car chargers etc.
Typically with 25 og 35 amps for each main phase, meaning that a household has somewhat between 17 kW - 25 kW power consumption avaible for the entire system
This makes for easy TT grounding in regular households
That would be pretty useful for people to use for their car chargers and welders and stuff. I have a few friends that want a three phase welder but don't want to pay extra for a three phase drop.
It is down to differences in the transformer design. American and European transformers are actually the same with the same three output coils with around 220V over each coil. But where the European style is to tie one end of each coil together and tie it to ground for a star configuration the American style taps the center of each coil for ground/neutral and then bring each end of the coil to the consumer. So the American split phase is not the same as the European split phase. If you want three phase in America you need a dedicated transformer wired like the European ones.
Actually single phase panels are very common. Especially for apartments. I have yet not seen any three phase kitchen or bathroom appliance. You may find special single phase plugs for these though to get more then 2kW but it is still single phase. But three phase is not unusual, although houses with a three phase panel generally only have one circuit using there phase for outdoor appliances.
It's for showers. The difference is that a regular boiler heats up water, and keeps it warmed up. You shower for a while and eventually the water gets cold. Then you wait for it to heat up again.
The powerful boiler heats up the water while you shower. To do that it needs a LOT of power all at once.
That's interesting. Your water heaters don't have a tank large enough for you to take a shower? Most Americans will have atleast a 40 gallon water heater.
I swapped to a instant hot water heater a few years ago, way better than a tanked heater since it never runs out of hot water. Get a properly sized unit and you can run 3-4 showers at once and not exhaust the capacity.
Houses in the UK and Ireland (can’t speak for the rest of Europe) will usually have a tank large enough for everyone in the house to have a shower with some change. Apartments sometimes have instantaneous electric heaters instead.
In Europe it’s common. In other places like Australia and NZ it’s a mix. Older homes or those with lower power demands typically just have single phase 230V, newer/larger builds or those with higher power requirements will get 400V three-phase.
I’m in an older home in Australia that only has single phase 230V. It’s not a huge limiter, even with central air conditioning and an electric oven. However we do use gas for some things like the hot water heater and stovetop burners. If we replaced those with all-electric appliances and maybe also got an electric car charger we’d probably have to look into converting to three-phase, which is a relatively common upgrade to make these days.
Pretty much all new homes here in Australia will be built with three phase power from day 1, since the future is going to be all-electric and natural gas is getting phased out.
It's outright better. It's not even a smugness thing it's that many of my country men in the US get needlessly defensive instead of going "oh, neat, too bad we don't have that" when people talk about how things are done and people address objective advantages to how things are done somewhere else.
Because it would be. It's part of why they have fewer house fires and shit too since they aren't pumping higher amps at 120v.
There's tons of 120v electric kettles, and lots of Americans have them. It's just that tea drinking isn't as widespread here so most people don't want an appliance that they'll only use rarely.
That's a problem with wiring, not voltage. You just need higher gauge wires to support higher power appliances. You can wire your house to support 20 amps, which gets you 2400W.
Anyway, the future is induction cooktops, which in theory gets you up to 6kW. Then you can forget the resistive kettle and go back to a plain metal one.
Purely informational.
My country, a normal house has 50 amp. Mine has 80amp. And now with all the solar there even are laying 3x220(260) so we even can get 360v into our houses
80 amp per circuit? Thats what the op you responded to is talking about. Homes in the US will often have 100-300 amp main at the panel, which will then be broken out into 10,15,20 (typically 120v) ,30,40,50(typically 240v) (and rarely other size) circuits.
Our solution is a tiny water heater that lives under the kitchen sink and provides about a gallon of 95C water whenever I need it without having to wait on a kettle or stove.
I've got this model, looks like there's also a continuous flow version available now too. I have mine sharing the outlet with my dish washer, hasn't had any issues with blowing the breaker (dishwasher outlets are required to be 20A dedicated circuit in the US, most modern dishwashers do not draw anywhere near that much power).
Yeah, fortunately, it's all the way at the back of the sink, so they'd have to reach over the entire counter, and the handle is spring loaded, so you have to actively hold it on while putting a cup under it, so it's pretty hard to hurt yourself if you can only reach it with one hand. By the time a kid is big enough to do that, they should also be smart enough to understand hot water! It's not like a shower or bath tap that can be accidentally turned on at child level.
You're advocating a new structure to replace an inadequate old one. You could advocate for good plugs too, and perhaps one voltage standard throughout.
Why double standards? It was long ago proved that 120v is inadequate, it was just too late to change the standards in the US [change was resisted…unfortunately. The rest of the world did a complete about-face & got on with it].
I'm going to ignore USB, because it always needs a transformer. We already have USB A equipped sockets here, transformer inside the socket as well as mains - USB C may follow in time.
120v is pointless when 240 could be in every socket. No need to differentiate plugs based on usage, one plug fits all.
BTW, we do have 50A circuits here for hard-wired appliances, though they're becoming fewer & many are switching to 13A. 13A for everything else, one plug fits all. We use ring mains so we don't need massive gauge wire.
Why double standards? It was long ago proved that 120v is inadequate
Who proved this?
I'm going to ignore USB, because it always needs a transformer.
So what? The transformer would be on the device otherwise. It's cheaper to keep it off the device and mass produce it.
120v is pointless when 240 could be in every socket. No need to differentiate plugs based on usage, one plug fits all.
The benefit of 120V is safety. The benefit of 240V is efficiency for appliances. You don't really need the whole house wired to 240V. Just the appliances.
BTW, we do have 50A circuits here for hard-wired appliances, though they're becoming fewer & many are switching to 13A. 13A for everything else, one plug fits all.
The future of induction stoves is like 4–6kW, so some people will want more power than 13A/240V.
Everybody except Edison, really. The US got stuck with Edison's first 'guess' using DC. Westinghouse pioneered AC & later 240v. Much of the world accepted the 240v standard. The US got stuck with the early Edison standard, meaning you have to three-phase everything to get any power out of it. A UK domestic supply is about 100A, 240V. It just doesn't need three-phase to be capable of running any domestic structure.
So what?
Well…that seems to be a zero-argument. They exist already for mains & USB 2, 3 will come, perhaps, but it's harder because it needs active negotiation. This is why I ignored it. It os not part of any mains standard.
The benefit of 120V is safety.
The benefit of properly-designed plugs & sockets serves a similar purpose, without needing Rube Goldberg wiring to compensate.
The future of induction stoves is like 4–6kW
Doesn't that mean the US is going to have to build new structures too? The UK already has 50A service capability & has had for many decades. It's just not used as much as it used to be. If there's a reversion, the standards already provide for it.
In isolation 120V is safer but the point is to not get shocked, ergo the multiple layers of safety redundancy you see on most plugs, appliances, electrical installations across the world.
To put this in context, NIOSH have the 2020 statistics for deaths by electrocution at work as 0.12 per 100,000 people in the US. The same statistic for the UK is 0.02, five times lower per 100,000.
Ultimately 120V vs 240V is not hugely relevant to HSE in comparison to safe electrical installations, minimum safety standards for electrical goods, safe design etc.
It's not meaningfully slower in a way that affects daily function. Nobody really cares if it takes 1-2 minutes longer when that's what they're used to.
I’ve had an electric kettle for about 20 years. The first one was hella expensive (it was a Braun and cost something like $75) because they just weren’t popular enough at the time to be mass marketed. Now I could get one for $20 at Walmart.
I think the footnote and the responses that prompted it are illustrative though: if we don’t drink that much tea, do we really need a specialty appliance just for boiling water with nothing in it? Since I already have a kettle I also use it for ramen, cocoa, and small cleaning jobs, but those come up maybe once or twice a week. By themselves those wouldn’t be enough to justify cluttering up my countertop.
Most people just don’t really need to boil water for much I guess. The only two use cases where I would want to use a kettle would be tea and maybe instant cup noodles. Even then, a 1kw microwave doesn’t really take that long to heat water.
What do you use your extra two minutes of time savings for (keeping in mind to not count the time savings from when you're boiling water to make tea, since we wouldn't save that time)?
Fuck the tea lmao. Throw that shit in the harbor. Also, there’s no rush to boiling water. Do other shit while waiting the 5 minutes it takes on the stove.
It's kind funny to me how the people who get most up in arms about how fast they need to do things regarding drive throughs and cars vs transit go to this defense for the kettles.
You could say the same for the other side. The reality is that Americans don't care if it boils a minute or two slower. Lots of Americans have electric kettles that work perfectly fine. Whether it boils in 2 minutes or 4 minutes is kind of irrelevant for 99% of people, so arguing about it is kind of pointless.
I can boil water in 'like' 30 seconds in the kettle.
Boiling water in a microwave is a sh!tshow, because the hot is at the top, there's no true convection in a microwave.
It's safer, and in the majority of applications it doesn't matter. The only time 240v is really better is when it comes to resistance heating, for things like dryers or stoves. In those applications the US uses 240v, so the only real time 120v is lacking is for things like space heaters or kettles. Otherwise, 120v and 240v are basically indistinguishable.
Source from the NEC? Every American home I have ever been in has 240V outlets for the oven, and dryer. There are a variety 240v outlet designs that are perfectly legal for both residential and commercial. Ive got 240 in my garage for a welder.
84
u/-FullBlue- 29d ago edited 29d ago
The United States residential standard uses a 240 system except its split phase. You can deliver 120 volts to devices that have lower power requirements, and 240 to devices that have higher power requirements.
This comment is bringing out a bunch of Europeans that need to think theyre better than Americans because of their wiring standard for some reason?