I don't know,but is Best Buy in other countries than the US ?
The way the origional post was made it tended to indicate the circuit was the type used in the US. People should state which country they are using things in. I doubt the question would come up if the talked about appliance was in parts of the world where 220 volts were normally used.
REALLY simple. The one you call "ground" is the center tap of a 240 volt transformer and hot to hot is 240 - just like a wuro plug (which does not have a center tap) It's single phase, co no "funny stuff" involved.
IMHO a.h.r has less than one thread a year about UK wiring systems. We are not familiar with UK features, like ring circuits. It is entirely reasonable to expect questions will not be about UK.
Maybe the OP is in the US and discovered the kettle on the internet?
John T wrote the kettle has North American and European versions. I couldn't read the link - would be interesting in more information on the NA version.
NEC 210.6-A In dwelling units ... the voltage shall not exceed 120 volts, nominal, between conductors that supply terminals of the following: (2) cord-and-plug connected loads 1440 volt-amperes, nominal, or less ....
The specs should have shown the rating as 1200 W. Would appear questionable that a NA version would meet UL or other appropriate standards.
NEC 422.6 appliances "shall be listed".
If installing a 240V receptacle you have to maintain 120V spacing and number of circuits.
If the OP is asking whether to buy one of these for use in the US - don't. NA 1200W 120V version available?
Would it work? Probably. There are other issues. Like the plug is probably UK-standard and would have to be replaced. A UK plug probably has a fuse for 32A ring circuits. The control might break both poles in the US but not in the UK. Problem with running the UK neutral at 120V? Problem with how control voltage is derived from 60Hz?
No neutral at 120 - No "neutral" at all. Just safety ground. IF there is timing deduced from line frequency it will not be accurate if
50hz unit on 60 - if synthesized from a crystal or other oscillator, no problem.
What about places like kitchens where code requires GFCI outlets, or requires those safety outlets where little shutters close so kids can't stick paper clips into an outlet and fry themselves? Do they make 240V versions of them, or is the code written in a way so that only standard
120V duplex outlets require them?
I don't know much about electricity but in the European plug, you have
240 volt electricity flows from a live wire (when I used the term "hot wire", British asked me "where are you from?") to a neutral wire. While in the US, electricity flows from a 120 volt wire to another 120 volt wire. Do they have the same effect?If we consider the difference of two 120 volt sine waves that are 180 degree out of phase (the US system), it seems to me it might be the same as a 240 volt sine wave (the European system). Is that true? If that's true, then the European 240 hot-to-neural is equivalent to the US 120 hot-to-120 hot and one can just plug in European electronic devices to the US 240 volt receptacles provided the plug and the receptacle match.
install 2 pole gfci breaker in the panel.
Yes they do
That is correct.
Interesting question.
In a "dwelling unit" GFCI is only required for 120V receptacles.
In a dwelling unit where "tamper resistant" is required, it is also required for 240V. Since tamper resistant 240V receptacles are required they must exist.
Not an answer to what I wrote.
Also not an answer
Thank you. I learnt something here.
That's probably why the US 240 volt circuit originally didn't have neutral. But later, the code requires a neutral. How does this neutral work? It seems no electricity would flow through it.
Also, in a 120 volt system, the neutral goes to ground but in a 120volt
- 120 volt system, no electricity goes to ground. It seems to me the electricity goes back to the power company.
Always a good thing ... to have learnt something :
The US electrical system has a transformer with 3 wires comming into the house. It is a ceneter tapped transformer. The center tap is also connected to the ground. When the wires leave the breaker (fuse) box there casn be either of 2 combinations. The first is just two wires with 240 volts on them and a ground wire. This is for things like a well pump that has no need for 120 volts in them. Each wire will still be 120 volts to ground. Another will have those 3 wires plus the neutral which is also bonded to the ground at the breaker box. Two of the wires will have 240 volts between them and 120 volts to ground. Then there is the 120 volt circuits like lights and wall sockets. Part of them will be on one side of 240 volt wire to the neutral and part of them will be onthe other side.
If ( which is almost never the case in the home) each side of the 120 volt circuits are ballanced no current will flow on the neutral wire. The neutral wire will have the unballanced current on it.
There is never any current on the ground wire if everything is working correctly. The ground wwire is to the frame of a device so that if the insulation breaks down a breaker will trip and keep you from getting a shock if you touch the frame and someting that is grounded to the earth.
I assume you are talking about ranges, driers, etc. They have 2 hots and (maybe) a neutral. During WW2 the code allowed the supply neutral to also be used as a ground to save on copper use. There are requirements for that to be used. Years ago the code decided the war was over and required a separate ground, but old installations are "grand fathered" and can still be used. Someone talked about changing a bonding jumper.
A blower motor in a drier might be 120V. Stovetop 'burners' 120V?
The system ground is connected to "earth" to keep the voltage-to-earth at a safe value.
The neutral is bonded to system ground at the service (and only at that point) to keep the voltages on the hots and neutral at a reasonable value with respect to earth (they could float up thousands of volts).
If there is a short, like from a 120V drill motor to the grounded metal drill, the ground creates a large current to trip a supply breaker. But the path is not to earth - the resistance back to the transformer is not reliably low enough. The path is all metallic - ground wire to service to the ground-neutral connection to the neutral to the supply transformer (back to the power company).
Plus what others have written.
Yes, because that other 120 volt wire is 180 deg out of phase with the first wire. They come from a center tapped step-down transformer. you have two hots and a neutral. 120V between either hot and neutral,
240V between the hots.
Yes.
If that's
Yes, that's true, you could modify it to make it work, but then IDK where you would plug in the appliances in question, ie electric kettle, coffee grinder. US homes are not equipped with 240V receptacles on kitchen counters and as Bud pointed out in another post, those receptacles are not allowed by code on kitchen counters and similar. The only place you see 240V receptacles are for dryers, electric stoves, car charging these days too I guess. And you're not supposed to modify listed equipment.
You need to understand how the american distribution system works. The main distribution is 3 phase high voltage. The phases are split off for residential services and transmitted at medium high voltage to the street transformers. The primary is only 2 wires - andthe secondary is 3 wires (actually more on multi-tap trasnformers so they can adjust output voltage). The output is a center tapped wifing withan output of nominally 230 or 240 volts - with the centertap at
115 or 120. The center tap is grounded to a "safety ground" but the safety ground under normal circumstances does not cary ANY load. The ground return neutral system used in early rural elestrification is gone except for a VERY FEW remaining electrical co-operatves and can be identified by the single transmission wire.A 230/240 volt load puts NO current on the neutral, and a ballanced load - identical current on each line to neutral pair- also flows no current in the neutral because the AC current sine wave cancels itself out. "
If you "lift" the neutral with an unbalanced load the voltage on one side goes up and the other side down as the circuit becomes a "voltage devider" and the resistances take their share of the current and drop their share of the voltage as per Ohm's Law. The total of the 2 voltages will always be the line to line voltage of the service (230 or 240 volt nominal)
The only time electricity flows to ground is when there is a "ground fault" or a "leak to ground" from either line.
For industry 3 phase power can be supplied at various voltages, either Delta or Wye - and on the common 308 or 400 volt system the derived voltages are 115-ish and 208-ish or 277-ish. Can't remember the actual voltages and how Delta and Wye relate to the voltages. Delta has all 3 phases "in series" - 3 connections around the outside like a triangle - while a wye connection has all three "in parallel" - all 3 connected at one center point like a "Y".
I used "series" and "parallel" rather loosely - it's not exactly technically true, so don't nit-pick, guys - just the easiest way to describe the layout in simple terms.. With the phases being 120 degrees out of phase with each other the voltages do not add like they do in a single phase center tapped distribution system - hense the differences in voltages. To makr things even more intersting their's grounded lig and wild leg delta too, if I remember correctly (It's been a few dacades since I had to bother my mind with this stuff)
Sure. Basically the lecktricity runs down one wire and an equal amount back.
So, why would the power company ever need to make more? It never gets used up.
I found this the other day in a box. Dated pre-WWW.
D^B^D^M 1/24/86
Today's scientific question is: What in the world is electricity? And where does it go when it leaves the toaster?
Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electrical lession: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet then reach your hand into a friends mouth and touch one of his dental fillings. Did you notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in pain? This teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force, but we must never use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an important electrical lesson.
It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works. When you scuffed your feet, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very small objects tha carpet manufacturers weave into carpets so that they will attract dirt. The electrons travel through your bloodstream and collect in your finger, where they form a spark that leaps to your friends filling, then travels down to his feet and back into the carpet, thus completing the circuit.
AMAZING ELECTRONIC FACT: If you scuffed your feet long enough without touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your finger would explode! But this is nothing to worry about unless you have carpeting.
... paragraphs on Galvani and Ben Franklin elided
But the greatest electrical pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal education and lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major invention in 1877 was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of American homes, where it basically sat until 1923 when the record was invented. But Edison's greatest achievment came in 1879 when he invented the Electric Company. Edison's design was a brilliant adoption of the simple electircal circuit; the electric company sends electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant part) sends it right back to the customer again.
This means an electric company can sell a customer the same batch of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since very few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely. In fact, the last year any new electricity was generated was 1937; the electric companies have been merely re-selling it ever since, which is why they have so much time to apply for rate increases.
I see what bud is asking.
If I recall correctly a UK power cord has brown, blue, green. Green is safety ground. Brown is "hot", carries 240VAC. Blue is the return, I don't know what the Brits call it but it is equivalent to US white/neutral. I assume it is bonded to earth somewhere for the same reason neutral and ground are bonded together at the main panel in the US.
In the US there are two "hot" leads for 240VAC, but both are at 120V relative to neutral and 180 degrees out of phase with each other. bud's comment was, whether appliances in the UK somehow "expect" there be little to no voltage between blue and ground, while an appliance wired to a US 240V plug will place 120 volts on the blue lead with respect to ground. The appliance still gets the full 240 volts, and will work normally, as long as there is enough isolation.
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