Comment on Easy-to-use solar panels are coming, but utilities are trying to delay them
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 1 week agoYou also use 120VAC which makes the current overload issue a lot worse.
Voltage inside of residences is 120v AC, but its 240v thats delivered to each house. I think a bigger difference is that in the USA that 240v AC is single phase where I believe (Germany included) many nations in the EU are 3 phase.
cynar@lemmy.world 1 week ago
It’s worth noting that this is talking about plug in solar, so would be at standard mains voltage.
1kw would be around 4A in Europe, but 8A in the USA. Also, since resistive losses scale with I^2 that’s 4x the heat dumped in the walls.
At least in the UK, they tend to run 3 phase to a road, but only a single phase goes into a given house. You need to get a special hook up to get 3 phase to a domestic premise, and they don’t like doing it.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Thats fair.
TIL about the UK electrical system. Thanks!
I’m at the edge of my knowledge but that sounds like it matches the USA system (for the number of phases).
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 1 week ago
The UK uses single phase to the house. This is provided via one 240v hot and a neutral. Their final distribution transformer bonds one side of the output coil to ground and use it as a neutral, which makes the other side of the coil 240v relative to that ground.
The US uses split phase to the house. This is 240v provided via two opposing 120v hots and a common neutral. Their final distribution transformer is almost identical to the UK version: end to end, they have a 240v output. The difference is that instead of bonding one end of the output coil to ground and using it as a neutral for the other end, they instead bond the center of the output coil to ground and use that as a common neutral for both ends.