Why Europe uses 240V at 50Hz but America uses 120V at 60Hx

Question

Why Europe uses 240V at 50Hz but America uses 120V at 60Hx

In: Technology

Answer 1

I don’t think it’s accurate to say that the US is 120V per say. Household voltage is 240v single phase with the phase split resulting in 120v- typically urban residential transformers are delivering 240v three phase in a star configuration which gets split off between the phases. Commercial is usually 208v three phase delta, and light industrial and some commercial is 480v three phase, a lot of times for lights they split the phases for 277v. Big industrial operations can utilize kvs from the grid.