I'm not a technical person, but I think some of the previous comments have been a bit misleading. Please allow me to stick my nose in to offer some observations, and thanks in advance for any corrections to my contribution:
"having outlets on different phases in the same room is risky" This is standard practice in the US for residential wiring, for places like kitchens with higher demands. Typically each "box" is on one lead, so that the different phases would be completely separate (different wiring to different boxes). Among other reasons, this is done for load balancing - you want the fridge on a different line than the electric range, for example. "I guess in the US you need three phase supplies to stop high power appliances, such as ovens and washers" Historically, things like clothes washers in the US might be described as using less power than European ones, despite the size difference. Mostly because European ones have always had water heating functions, while US ones were only motors and pumps. That is changing as Euro- and world-designed models become more common in the US, so that water heating functions are becoming more common in washers sold in the US. "In US homes, they run 240 AC in, and split it for most of the outlets" I think US drops are all 110 - a house gets two wires, each 110, which are 220 if put together. Not split in the house as far as I know. "In the US, real three phase is only in industrial systems" Well, this is ok but a bit misleading. Most (maybe all?) US electical distribution is 3 phases from the power plant. Look at transmission towers, normally you see the distribution wires in sets of 3. Most residential neighborhood distribution is two phases only. But this is still "real three phase" electricity distibution, to use your words, but often just two phases in a given neighborhood. Sometimes all three phases lead into an area, and then the phases are paired in the different combinations for sub-areas, again for load balancing. Commercial/industrial locations usually get three drops, sometimes it's needed for certain equipment, otherwise it's just to accomodate the higher load. -- Goodsounds ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Goodsounds's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=14201 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=50082 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
