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
Since *all* last-mile power lines are underground in Netherlands (and
in many EU countries) the common way to distribute power is to send
mid voltage to a "transformerhouse" which resembles a garage or
sometimes a small house in a residential neighborhood, which houses
the transformer to step the
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
The difference is historically whether there has been a bonded neutral. My
understanding is this wasn't common in EU until more recently. (Bonded
means a stake is driven in the ground at your house and connected to one
side of the line that is then designated as the "neutral", meaning it has
no
On 11 Mar 2024 at 17:37, Cor van de Water via EV wrote:
> In my homes in either Netherlands or India, only the phase was
> protected with a breaker.
I have heard that that's the case in the UK also - breakers are single pole,
and open only the hot side.
Maybe branch circuit breakers are double
On Mon, Mar 11, 2024 at 4:52 PM EV List Lackey via EV wrote:
> Circuit breakers are always double-pole, so they open both hot and neutral.
In my homes in either Netherlands or India, only the phase was
protected with a breaker.
Neutral was wired straight from the service entrance to the
On Mon, Mar 11, 2024 at 1:35 PM Lawrence Winiarski via EV
wrote:
> That means our 240 has a slight advantage in that each leg is only 120v above
> ground, while I think some countries have a 240 with a hot and neutralleg.
The USA 240V is a split-phase system, meaning two 120V phases in 180
deg
The consensus is that ~30mA is the threshold for a fatal shock under
ordinary circumstances:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_injury
and
https://www.asc.ohio-state.edu/physics/p616/safety/fatal_current.html
Thus, most countries pick 30 mA as the trip for GFCI (RCD). Picking a
greater
On 11 Mar 2024 at 20:33, Lawrence Winiarski via EV wrote:
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think at least some of the non-us
> households ONLY have 240 volts (i.e they don't bring 480 into the
> panel and have split transformers like we have but rather they
> groundone leg as a neutral)
I don't
Lee wrote - I have many, holding down the basement floor
How novel, so I if you ever want to move your house all you have to do is
remove
the transformers?
Best regards,
Rush Dougherty
TucsonEV
www.TucsonEV.com
> -Original Message-
> From: EV On Behalf Of Lee Hart via EV
>
Lee,
I have designed EVSE so you can quote me on this: The GFI limit that
(level2, AC) EV Charging Stations are designed to for the USA is 20mA.
(For EU the limit is 30mA, the same limit as the standard GFCI
breakers in EU, although there is an additional requirement to detect
6mA DC Current
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
We have 240 volt systems of course (stove/dryer and less common nema 6-15
etc..). Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think at least some of the non-us
households ONLY have 240 volts (i.e they don't bring 480 into the panel and
have split transformers like we have but rather they groundone leg
On 11 Mar 2024 at 12:05, Cor van de Water via EV wrote:
> As a consequence of the higher voltage, the current is lower for the
> same power and where I hear a lot about electrical fires in the USA,
> that is a rarity in Europe ...
The higher domestic voltage also allows for more powerful
Cor van de Water wrote:
> my garage has a GFCI circuit. As a consequence, I cannot use
> my garage to do any development work, because as soon as
> I plug in one of my HP power supplies, even before I turn it on,
> the heavy capacitive filtering on the AC line will trip the GFCI
> because it
Phil wrote:
> no conductor is ever over about 160v peak-to-peak with respect to ground
I agree, but with one little nit to pick. My AC line voltage is normally
120vac, and varies from about 115v to 124v depending on the current grid
loading. The peak of 124vac is actually 170v; a situation that
As a consequence of the higher voltage, the current is lower for the
same power and where I hear a lot about electrical fires in the USA,
that is a rarity in Europe, while here in the USA I personally know of
two people who had a starting electrical fire in a power strip, one
could barely keep the
Keep in mind that excepting North America, only (part of) Japan uses a
lower voltage. In the US (residential) system, no conductor is ever over
about 160v peak-to-peak with respect to ground, whereas in NZ/EU you are
getting over 300v P-P, which is arguably 4 times more lethal. I'd
definitely
On 10 Mar 2024 at 23:41, (-Phil-) via EV wrote:
> Based on what I know, [the US NEC is] one of the most rigorous codes in
> the world.
Agreed. I've seen some ... interesting ... wiring practices elsewhere,
including Spain, Italy, France, Canary Islands, Puerto Rico, and South
Korea.
Some of
When I put my solar in about five years ago, I took the "opportunity" to
replace my 100A Zinsco main panel with a 200A Siemens main panel. On the new
panel, the main breaker is at the bottom of the panel and the panel was marked
that it was required to hook up solar to the top of the panel
I don't know if most know this, but the NEC (National Electrical Code) is
written by the NFPA (National Fire Protection Association). That is an
organization mainly driven by fire insurance underwriters. We thus have an
electrical code carefully constructed and revised to reduce insurance
First, breakers themselves really don't care which way the power is
flowing. I can't think of anything about a breaker that would behave
differently if the power flows in or out of the bus bars.
VERY large breakers need power on the input side to rewind the trip
mechanism. Even then, you
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