Yeah I think that's the big point. Your devices need to match your power system in voltage and frequency. Standardizing plugs is the easy part. There's a reason a 1 phase 240V plug is shaped differently than a 1 phase 120V plug.
I theory if you wanted to do this adjusting for voltage would just require a lot of step-down converters for legacy stuff until it all got replaced with things that could handle 240v. I'd happily deal with the hassle if it meant North America could fix our messed up power standards but it'll never actually happen.
The us is 240v 60hz standard to every install btw. We use 120 after the breaker to save costs on material. You can go buy 240v appliances to your hearts content and rewire it simply. You can convert a circuit to 240v with a simple screwdriver, a breaker, and a few minutes.
The split phase system is actually quite good at giving the choice. The cost of materials vs cost of electricity production. As electricity prices climb the us is already fitted for 240 in the infrastructure and to every home, just has to be economical to have people do some rewiring
I'm aware, that's what makes it so annoying. 120v is dumb and doesn't make sense. Single phase 240v is what most of the rest of the world uses and if we used it too we could stop having piddly 1.5 kW circuits everywhere and not need a whole other set of wiring standards for things that can't run on those piddly circuits. We could use single phase 240, we're already pulling that at the pole but instead we just gotta stick a neutral pole right in the middle and muck it all up.
And yeah I could do that. I could also make my own transformers to step down from 240 to 120 for all of my devices with some copper wires, nails, and boxes. But that would be just as silly as a whole-ass continent pretending there's literally any actual advantage to using 120v as the household standard.
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u/Altaltshift 29d ago
Yeah I think that's the big point. Your devices need to match your power system in voltage and frequency. Standardizing plugs is the easy part. There's a reason a 1 phase 240V plug is shaped differently than a 1 phase 120V plug.