I remember that the city of Delft had its power distributed in a similar fashion as the USA, with two phases at 115V to ground and outlets wired with the two phases. Before the end of last century, when The Netherlands was also driving to eliminate all overhead wiring, even from rural areas, they also converted Delft from this center-grounded system to the usual single phase 230V to ground & Neutral, so they could use 3-phase distribution.
On Mon, Mar 11, 2024 at 7:11 PM Steve Gaarder via EV <ev@lists.evdl.org> wrote: > > As I understand it, 110 volts was chosen because an arc light operates at > 55 volts, and thus two of them in series would work well. > > I believe Europe started out at 110/120, and moved up to 220/240 to reduce > the need for copper, esp. after WWII. When I lived in Europe in the > 1960s, I traveled to places in France and Italy that had 110/120. And I > recall reading a posting from a German electrical worker describing what > they did to convert a village from 110 to 220. > > And here's a writeup in voltages in Italy: > https://samuele963.github.io/electrics/history.html > > Steve Gaarder > > On Mon, 11 Mar 2024, (-Phil-) via EV wrote: > > > As far as I know, Edison decided on 110VDC (That's why people in the US > > constantly refer to it as "110" when it's not been that way for over a > > century), as that was high enough to make conductors reasonable, but not > > terribly lethal, (so he claimed) light bulb filaments could bear it, and > > switchgear could handle the arcs. When AC came along, to preserve the same > > light bulbs, they matched Edison's DC. (RMS) > > > > It started off as 110VAC, and slowly rose over the years until it was made > > official in ANSI C81.1 in the early 1950's as 120VAC. > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Address messages to ev@lists.evdl.org > No other addresses in TO and CC fields > HELP: http://www.evdl.org/help/ > _______________________________________________ Address messages to ev@lists.evdl.org No other addresses in TO and CC fields HELP: http://www.evdl.org/help/
