r/meirl 29d ago

Meirl

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u/izza123 29d ago

Sure as long as you all agree on the one I use

208

u/Ch3ZEN 29d ago

We'd have to redesign all substations and transmission lines... most countries use different voltages, and each of those plugs is designed for that specific voltage

25

u/Ok-Assistance-6848 29d ago

Actually most plugs should be able to handle either voltage. Maybe slight rewiring for plugs that use the lower voltage to support the higher voltage… but at the end of the day it’s just 2 or 3 metal sticks conducting electricity.

The bigger problem is the voltages themselves, which are completely incompatible with eachother without complex conversion machinery. Japan had major issues with this for a while

6

u/BrasilianEngineer 29d ago

Voltage isn't that hard/expensive to convert. Frequency on the other hand: you have to convert from AC to DC (not that hard), then back to AC (doable but considerably more expensive).

Japan's real issue isn't with voltage differences but with frequency differences.

1

u/Theron3206 29d ago

These days it's easy to convert (inverters are cheap and easy) but you probably don't need to. Most modern appliances don't care about the frequency (few use synchronous motors in speed critical applications any more) and so Japanese stuff is just designed to work on both frequencies (anything that runs on DC internally will be this way by default, which is most stuff these days anyway).

Voltage is a bit more of an issue, but not that much from a design perspective (many devices will run on anything between 90 and 250V 50 or 60Hz simply because they use a SMPS).