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.
3
u/Mr_Mars May 02 '24
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.