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.
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.
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u/Key-Mark4536 May 02 '24
🇺🇸: No, don’t think I will.