110 v Supply System

Why not? 220VAC is common in most countries other than USA, and so is 50 Hz instead of 60 Hz.

Electrical power generation began in the USA by Westinghouse and Tesla at 60 Hz and low voltage of 117 VAC.

I guess that, since it takes less wire to transform high voltage to 220 V rather than 110 V, that's why other countries use the higher "low" voltage. I know it hurts more to get shocked by 220 than 110.

bill; edison used 110/220 volts dc and the first generators were water powered at 25 hz not 60 cps (60 HZ) perry

You're right. I have known that the initial frequency was 25 Hz, but I forgot. Tesla later used 60 Hz.

I didn't mention Edison, but you're right about that too.

It must be because we're afraid of 230V. :-)

I mean, yes, we do have 230V at the panel, and we use it for high-power items such as a clothes dryer, HVAC, water heater, or kitchen range, but we're careful to take one side only in the breaker panel and wire 115V to all the exposed AC outlets.

If this was a panel in my jurisdiction and I inspected, it would be rejected as being not code compliant.

Not being accusatory or anything, because I am not a licensed electrician, but I don't see anything that jumps out at me as being dangerous here. What is it about this installation that does not meet code? Hell, I just WISH every breaker panel that I saw was as well laid out as this.

I agree it is a beautifully laid out panel and the wiring is neat, but here in Canada at least you can not run the field wiring through the main breaker side of the panel. Since the top side of the main switch is live, unless the meter base is pulled, people tend to get electrocuted when feeding them through.

A hint for you both, look at the ground electrode conductor.

The bare main ground wire is at the top left, and looks good. The green wire on the bottom left is a ground for some field device and is OK as well. Unless I'm missing something.

The grounding electrode conductor should go directly to the identified conductor (neutral rail) and not to the bond rail. This is in fact mandated by the Canadian code. The current point of connection is to the bond rail.

So... the connection from the neutral relies upon the strap between the bond rail and the neutral to ground this service. This is backwards... the purpose of that strap is to connect the bond to the neutral and not the neutral to the bond. Perhaps a subtle difference but one that introduces another failure point in the grounding chain for this consumer service. I have a good drawing that shows how we require such connections to be made in my jurisdiction, I will post it later.

Cost just like you in buying something these countries shopped around. When they first started there where just a few manufactures that could supply the equipment. Most produced it with a single voltage in mind. The engineers worked with equipment that they knew or where most reliable and where govern by cost. Most of which going to countries that electrical power was new to. Most likely the engineers were foreign, hired by what ever leadership at the time. So the equipment came from countries that the leadership mostly had ties to. Since most of the electrical devices would also come from those countries. Which was defered to the engineers in their choice of the base voltage.

very less current loss??....

Explain point 2 please, makes no(n)sense.....

Most countries using 110 today use it for historical reasons, because it was the first AC house voltage available. But that begs the question of why 110 came first.

The choice of supply voltage, like anything else in engineering, is a tradeoff. On the one hand, there is the desire for cheaper wiring, which favors higher voltages (allowing lower current for a given power level).

On the other, resistive loads like incandescent lamps favor a lower voltage. It used to drive me crazy, during my summer vacations in France, how easily the very light-gauge 220V light filaments would break at the slightest shock. At first I thought the French just made lousy lightbulbs until my father explained the problem. For a given wattage, the 220V filaments needed to have twice the resistance of the equivalent 110V volt filament, which meant that they had to have half the cross-section area. No wonder.

Another problem I have here in the 220V Philippines is that I can't find a soldering iron (resistive load again) with less than 30W output. There is no equivalent of my 16W "pencil" iron in 220. This means that all my fine soldering has to be done with the pencil iron hooked up to a transformer.

When Edison was developing the first lighting systems, he knew higher voltage / lower current was a better choice economically speaking. But if you think a 5 W / 230 V has a fragile filament, just think of doing it with a carbonized bamboo fiber instead of tungsten...

Edison's lamp development group said around 100 V was the highest feasible voltage.

The dynamo group had come (cut and try) to a model with a 55 V output (even the "volt" unit was still not in use at the time).

So they decided to put two dynamos in series and standardize 110 V lamps.

Later in a Berlin company thought 110 was too low and they doubled it to 220.

A round number seems more logical, so Japan adopted 100 V.

Anglo-saxon America used to have 117 / 208 V systems (3-phase), later to be changed to 120 / 240 (one phase). Europe was 220 / 380, in some places 127 / 220.

Around 1988 Europe changed to 230 /400 as compromise with the UK (240). At the same time the European Unit decreed the US to be 115 V, because this is half 230. This is why you see a "115 / 230" switch on many a bivolt equipment.

Se non è vero...

Simple test to figure out why 110VAC is used for receptacles and lights.

1. stick a bare wire into a 110VAC receptacle (not the N or GND)

2. try same with 220VAC

Notice a shocking difference?

Wasn't it thought to be a "safe" voltage? (it is certainly "safer" than 220VAC, but not "safe" as such!!)

60 Hz is more "efficient" than 50Hz, transformers are slightly smaller for the same amount of power....Actually higher frequencies would be even better in that respect, but were difficult to generate 100 years ago.....now we are stuck with them.....

60 hz also just happens to be useful for line synchronized clock mechanisms too (makes the gearing simple). 50hz requires different gear ratios.

...but still simple.

Even 100 or 120 Hz would still be simple, the gearing can be worked out in your head......even.....

I do believe that synchronous motors for clocks still have a gearbox........60 Hz clock motors usually turn at 3600 RPM.....

See here:-

http://clockhistory.com/telechron/products/typea/index.html

So it really does not matter what the mains frequency is.......you just need the right gears to allow 1 RPM (usually!)

I was also taking into account electronic timing circuits, not just mechanical gearboxes. The old Commodore 64 for instance used the AC line frequency to sync the video subsystem PLL circuits. Kinda kludgy, but it worked and it was pretty simple.

...it also hade a "Poke" that put a short on the power supply and burnt the mainboard, "Kinda Kludgey" is a (too) mild comment!!!

Hmm, I don't recall that little "feature" Andy and I thought I knew the thing backwards and forwards. Heck I even turned one of mine into a C256 (bank swapped in 64K chunks.) not that I ever used it for much.

Apologies, it was the Commodore PET that had the bad "Poke", (my!) memory is getting bad, I mixed up the two machines.......

See here for "better" infos:-

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=191&st=1

Like:-

More details from Frank Leonhardt:

it's an 'urban myth' which was made up about the BBC Micro. However, it was based on a true story about the PET - there was a location you could poke to do with the graphics frequency which if you set it wrong could cause the HT supply in the monitor way over-voltage, which would sometimes break down the transformer. This came up in the PCW magazine* after someone wrote "it is impossible to damage a computer with bad software".

Another explanation is given here:-

http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/pet/index.htm

Which was:-

It was common practice to write this register to speed up video access in older PETs, however on the 6545 this sets a bad refresh rate which can damage the monitor. This is often referred to as the "Killer POKE", a reference to the BASIC command which activates it.