I wondered why 120 vs 240 and did a little googling, it seems there were quite a few reasons...
- When electric power was first being pioneered, there were two main players - Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. The two men had different approaches to power generation - Edison favoured 110V DC current, while Tesla worked with 240V AC current. Although Edison's preference for DC was eventually proven to be ineffective for power transmission over long distances, safety concerns about Tesla's higher voltage (admittedly fuelled by a PR campaign led by Edison, which included electrocuting a live elephant), led the US to adopt Edison's lower voltage, resulting in a 110V AC power network. - Soon after, electrical generation plants began opening in the industrialized world. In the United States, 120V became the standard because it was safer than 240V. Across Europe, Asia, and Africa, 230-240V became the go-to as it limited voltage losses during transmission and distribution. - After metal filament lamps became feasible, 220V became common in Europe because of the lower distribution costs. - In the UK wiring was available nationwide in the late 1950's. The rest of europe followed shortly after the US. Because it took the UK a bit of time to catch up, they had time to learn an important thing about the previous experience with household electricity - wiring houses was expensive! They had to use a lot of wire and by doubling the voltage they reduced the current to half thus reducing the wire gauge needed. - Among the 8 variations of residential voltage (100V - Japan only, 110V, 115V, 120V, 127V, 220V, 230V and 240V) there are 15 types of plugs used around the globe with some countries actually using two types of voltage. So it looks like it was a combination of cheaper and more efficient... danger of electrocution (elephants) be dammed. Rush Dougherty TucsonEV www.TucsonEV.com > -----Original Message----- > From: EV <ev-boun...@lists.evdl.org> On Behalf Of Steve Gaarder via EV > Sent: Saturday, February 8, 2025 10:58 AM > To: EV List Lackey via EV <ev@lists.evdl.org> > Cc: Steve Gaarder <gaar...@ecovillage.ithaca.ny.us> > Subject: Re: [EVDL] J1772, NACS, and adapters > > On Sat, 8 Feb 2025, EV List Lackey via EV wrote: > > >> The feeds to US homes are beefier than in Europe. > > > > Possibly because, at least in France and Spain, the larger your > > capacity, the higher the standing charge you pay. > > > > Also, they had to rebuild most of their infrastructure after ww2, and copper > was probably in limited supply. That was probably also the reason the moved > everybody to 220 volts. > > Steve > _______________________________________________ > 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/
