Why does the US use 110v and the UK use 220v?
In: Engineering
The benefits of longer distances at higher voltages were better understood when the other countries were standardising their power systems
The USA standardised too early and settled on 120v AC.
They also then developed their standards to be backward compatible by supplying 240v to each house with a slight complication….
The winding in the roadside transformer has a centre tap which splits the 240v phase in half so they get two 120v phases and a 240v phase for high draw appliances.
I wouldnt say its better – it does require effectively twice the amount of copper around a house to carry the same amount of power, and high wattage appliances can only be used in certain dedicated 240v outlets. But it is slightly more safer. Outlets typically handle up to 1.5kw.
Where as on the 230v system, its more efficient with less copper needed to distribute the same number of watts around a house, and any outlet is a high wattage outlet capable of up to 2.2kw.
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