I just had to share this youtube video. Finally i am able to understand the American system, or why they get such high voltage and high capacity at home (miners rejoice). It is incredibly informative for those of us who don't live there, and probably, for those living there unaware of why this work the way it works.
Will make some spoilers later, but first I'll give you some time to watch it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMmUoZh3Hq4My country uses 120v as well, but this is an apartment that gets two of three phases as explained in the video for 3 phase near the end, which is apparently common there for commercial office etc.
Warning: This video is a bit technical, its about how power is delivered to the American home. It might require some thinking
Mentioned but not explained in video: The result of 120v is a historical result from the dispute from Edison's 120 DC and Tesla's 240 60Hz AC (so called War of the Currents). America couldn't ignore the advantage of AC, but so many 100~120v appliances were already in the market, so that was the compromise solution.
See, a 120v incandescent light bulb can work the same with AC or DC, but feed it 240v and it pops.
And then there is Japan (also not mentioned in the video)... They took the 100v part way too literally (because DC power loses voltage over distance quickly, in America Edison company tried to keep their customers (next to generation) at 120v and the limit was when it went down to 100v a few blocks away. And to confuse things further, Japan had power plants imported from both America and Europe, resulting in their ridiculous half 60hz and half 50hz 100v country, the only one in the world.
Well i guess if you want to be pendantic, you would say your country is 11kV. Put a proper transformer and it will deliver you anything, provided they let you do so in the first place... The refresh can't be helped but note that 60Hz makes transformers save up to 20% in coil vs 50Hz, in that regard Europe took a poor design choice. Yes, Tesla chose 240v@60Hz for a reason, but Europeans wanted things those days to fit the 1, 2, 5 metric rule (like the coinage), so many went 220v and others 240v @ 50hz (converging into 230v in modern times).
Just for uniqueness sake, the only country that uses Tesla's ideal, is Guyana. All other (few remaining) 240v countries use 50Hz, only Guyana officially uses 60Hz @ 240v.
