Talk:Mains electricity

US translation

I am far from knowledgeable in the field, but in the US, and US-dominated online forums such as /., I often hear/see the "domestic electrical power supply" referred to as the "grid". It might be useful to add that term, rather than simply say that the term "mains" is not used in the US/Canada. --Danny Rathjens 07:07, 2004 Aug 23 (UTC)

The term "Hydro" is a regional term in Canada - I suspect it's called that in provinces where the power companies have "hydro" in their name - Quebec Hydro, BC Hydro, Hydro One (Ontario), Manitoba Hydro. I've lived in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Nova Scotia and the only people I've heard call it "hydro" have been from Ontario. --Thavron (talk) 06:06, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

We don't say "mains" in the US. 139.138.69.196 (talk) 15:14, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

The intro to the article says "grid power" is used in the US. -- Beland (talk) 01:48, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

I must confess that in over a half-century of being an American, I have yet to hear anyone use the three terms the lede says are in common use here. Most people I know refer to this as "household electric" regardless of what use the power provided is actually being put to. Daniel Case (talk) 03:18, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Most people I know don't know that 3-phase exists, so they just call it "electric". Many areas won't allow 3-phase installs in residential-zoned areas although I know they can be done around here since we had a 480V kiln at a stained glass shop I worked at that had a rental apartment above the showroom. The lack of ability to get it installed in many places means 3-phase is irrelevant to most of the population so differentiating between "industrial electric" and "home electric" when talking about it is pointless.

Honestly, knowing my ever exciting home country (US), 2/3 of the population probably thinks the receptacles are where the power from their prayers to heaven comes out to make the magic glass suns they screw into their ceiling work. To all the EU / UK people who might read this and think I'm attempting humour... unfortunately, no, no I'm not. A Shortfall Of Gravitas (talk) 11:30, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Much of the US runs only one phase down a street, so getting 3-phase to a house would be a lot of work. A kiln shouldn't need three phase, though getting a 480V one phase line might not be so easy. Should be much easier than 3-phase, though. Gah4 (talk) 08:40, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

"not using capacity" of supply

Um, I dunno what the usual practice is in the USA, but here in Australia there are plenty of devices - most of them for heating of one kind or another - that use the full capacity of the standard outlets. Electric kettles, electric frypans, and space heaters that use the full 10 amperes available are commonplace. Anybody like to put the case for retaining that claim in the article?--Robert Merkel 07:43, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

For every appliance that uses the full capacity, I suspect you'll find 3 or 4 that use a tiny fraction. Table lamps, clocks, radios, TV,computers, printers, modems, "wall-wart" chargers for cell phones and etc., hand-held power tools,trouble lights, electric foot massage baths, power pencil sharpeners, fans, mixers, blenders, food processors, electric brooms, fish tank compressors, humidifiers, dehumidifiers, night lights, CO detectors, block heaters, mosquito killers, electric string trimmers, barbeque rotisserie motors, Christmas lights, etc. etc. Qualify the statement if you must, but I think it's fair to say that many portable appliances don't need even 50% of a typical wall receptacle capacity. --Wtshymanski 17:47, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

The vast majority of appliances available come nowhere near using the full 10A available from a standard Australian socket outlet - mostly appliances with heating elements or airconditioners are the ones that do... Bear in mind that it's common practice to wire a power circuit with 2.5mm² PVC insulated cabling which is good for no more than 20A - if the majority of appliances used the full 10A there'd be a maximum allowed number of outlets per circuit of 2... Instead the wiring rules merely state that a circuit must work as intended and within reason the onus is on the electrician to spread load evenly among multiple circuits to avoid nuisance tripping of breakers... Single-phase appliances that use more than 10A are available as well hence the existance of 15A, 20A, 25A and 32A single phase outlets (the last 2 admittedly being very rare)... Higher power devices of course use 400V - that is 230V in a 3-phase star (wye) configuration... Anthrass 08:22, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Indeed there are lots of small appliances but at least here in the UK is it quite normal to plug a washing machine, a dishwasher or a 3KW heater into a normal socket. Those appliances need special circuits on the american system (not such an issue for washing machines and dishwashers because they need special plumbing too but not being able to put a decent sized fan heater in your bedroom whent the central heating breaks down seems like it would be quite a pain. Plugwash (talk) 16:30, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

True - 15A outlets are increasingly common here in Australia (especially in domestic laundries and the like) partly because of the proliferation of washers which heat their own water (rather than connecting to the hot water supply) and driers - some of which draw more than the 10A available from a standard outlet... Anthrass (talk) 07:25, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Canada here - got a chuckle from the 'central heating breaking down'. In all my years here the only time I can remember a problem was during a freak ice storm (1998 in Eastern Ontario/West Quebec) when the lines were weighed down with icicles and many of us lost power for several days or weeks (we moved in with relatives for a few days). The most popular heating system around here is forced-air natural gas (granted the fan runs on electricity) and I had lots of warning in the form of odd noises and pilot light issues when my furnace was threatening to break down a few years back. We get through most power outages (they rarely last more than a few hours in urban areas) with a couple of sweaters (houses are well insulated). Lots of people have wood stoves or fireplaces (especially in the country, where power outages can last longer) so I guess we adapted to our environment. Either that or we've been awfully lucky! By the way, the appliances I have that run on 220-240v are my stove, clothes dryer and a ceramics kiln that I rarely use because I can't handle watching the electric meter spinning around wildly for the hours and hours it takes to reach 1100 degrees C, though I can give the poor old furnace a break when I fire it up!--Yickbob (talk) 06:58, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

As an American, I can say that the space heater thing has never been a problem. Firstly, we have space heaters here that you can plug into a standard wall outlet and they work just fine, heating up a room nicely in a pinch. I'm not an electrician, so *shrug* about the wiring, all I need to know is that it's plug-and-go, and it is, so no problem there.

The other reason it's just really irrelevant is that, realistically, the only time you're going to lose heating is when you've also lost power. Most homes in my region are heated with furnaces that burn fuel oil (Northeastern US). Thus, anything that takes out your furnace would also take out anything plugged into the wall. In 36 years, I've seen only one exception to this, when a winter storm knocked out power and the furnace failed to automatically restart when power came back the next day. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.61.13.250 (talk) 04:01, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Naming issue: regionalism shouldn't be used for a title of a non-nationally localized article

It's idiosyncratic, at best, that the title of the article uses a regionalism that's unheard of by the great majority of the world's native English speakers. It really should have a more intuitive title, although with the numerous redirects that have been incorporated, most people should still be able to find it.

That being said...if you need that many redirects just so that people can still find an article despite its clunky title, that would be your tip-off that the title could use re-working, in the first place. ‎ User:2601:195:c100:f220:3daa:c769:ac63:12b9 06:04, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

I note that the anonymous IP from the US does not suggest an alternative? As all the alternatives I am aware of are simply regionalism from other countries I have a suspicion that there is a desire to change the title of this article written in British English to an Americanism? FF-UK (talk) 09:16, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

This article not only seems to have a regional British English title, it has a synonym in the Terminology section - "Electrical grid"- Wikipedia does not do synonyms so this looks like a case where duplicate articles should be merged and one name chosen. Per MOS:COMMONALITY a more descriptive title such as Electrical grid would be preferred over a regional colloquialism. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 17:49, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

This article is not about anything called an "electrical grid". It's really a guide to wall socket voltages. --Wtshymanski (talk) 01:41, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Then it should be merged/redirected to AC power plugs and sockets, or merged into Electrical grid. Large sections of the article are redundant to Electrical grid (and not about outlets) including: Power systems, Voltage levels, History of voltage and frequency, Voltage regulation, Power quality. The article seems to be an indiscriminate collection more than a topic. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 13:06, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

I suppose, but it seems to me that they are different enough. AC power plugs and sockets is specifically about plugs and sockets, and only indirectly the voltage, and mostly not frequency. I haven't though about Electrical grid, but it should be on the larger, national scale distribution system. This one is on the house level, including the history on how we got here, and from before the very large nationwide systems. More specifically, the voltage and frequency going into a house, but not how it got there. It might be that more could be done for each article, to keep them on topic. Gah4 (talk) 13:38, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Electrical grid says it covers the topic from Generating stations... to Distribution lines that connect individual customers. So that leaves AC power plugs and sockets, we have that. Mains electricity seems to be a regional colloquialism for power you get from an electrical grid, so named because it originally came into a house through a "main", as apposed to getting electrical power from batteries, a generator in the basement, photovoltaic systems, etc. So we seem to have what one group calls something, not what it is, i.e. WP:DICDEF territory. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 22:17, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

WP:TITLEVAR and MOS:ENGVAR say we're not allowed to just change from UK to US English on the theory that there are more people in the US than UK, but WP:TITLEVAR and MOS:COMMONALITY do say that if there's a term that speakers of all dialect would understand, that's better than using the primary one from a single dialect. This is not the first time we've gotten complaints about the title, so perhaps it is too unfamilar for most Americans. (I have no problem understanding it, but I watch a lot of British TV.) So if we want to change the title of this article without changing its scope, I think we'd want to find a term that is comprehensible to UK readers, and also other countries. So far this article says only "mains" is used there; does anyone know what the other intelligible if less common terms are in the UK? It's unclear to me that it's a "colloquialism" as opposed to simply vocabulary that is strongly different in all UK vs. US dialects. The article also has no information about most other English-speaking countries, so I've planted some talk page messages around WikiProjects asking for input from Indian, South African, and Australian English speakers. -- Beland (talk) 01:29, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

The fact this article is still using a british term that the majority of english speakers would not understand is really silly. The page is rife with dubious terminology (saying socket instead of receptacle), british phrases that nobody understands ("the mains"). Labeling this article "power grid" makes zero sense either, the power grid refers to the infrastructure that transports power, not a wall receptacle voltage. This article should be titled "Residential Electrical Power" or something along those lines, because commercial and Industrial sites receive entirely different services. I'd also like to point out that the "Building wiring" section talks about the services that European homes get, but not a single mention of what happens in America (a single phase from the transformer, at 240V, with a neutral going to the centertap to allow 120V). There is also zero citations in most of these sections. I hate this article. 24.194.198.194 (talk) 09:01, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

but the common voltages listed here would still be found for lighting and portable equipment

In describing US industrial voltages, the article mentions: but the common voltages listed here would still be found for lighting and portable equipment. While this is certainly true for plug-in equipment, including lighting, as well as I know 277V is very common for permanently wired lighting in larger buildings. (That is, line to neutral in a 277/480 system.) The 277/480 three-phase is also available for larger induction motor loads. For one, in larger buildings the lines from breaker panels to loads are longer, but also 277V is convenient for fluorescent lamp balances common in commercial building lighting. More recently, electronic fluorescent lamp ballasts will run from between 120V and 277V with no adjustment. Gah4 (talk) 10:29, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

United States Domestic Supply Voltage is ~240v ! Not ~120v !

AFAIK - the normal US supply voltage is ~240v and it is thus very misleading to state it is ~120v. Within a domestic customer's building (eg a house) the common circuits - eg lighting, outlets, are wired only to 'one half' of the split-phase supply and thus operate at ~120v. However the incoming supply (for typical single residences etc) and up to the service panel (consumer unit) is centre tapped ~240v. The breakers for each circuit may connect to either 1 or 2 'line' busbars as appropriate for that circuit. So, ~240v is supplied and available for use as appropriate to need. Consequently, most portable and/or low power appliances plus most lighting equipments are designed to operate at ~120v. Higher power/'installed' equipments are designed for the split phase ~240v. This situation is directly comparable to the ~110v split phase arrangements used for construction equipment in the UK. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.64.179.87 (talk) 20:33, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

→mains refers to what happens when you measure a wall outlet. Almost all accessible receptacles in an American house are 120V. 240V are only used for driers, ovens, stoves, and air conditioners. So it is very much 120v. 24.194.198.194 (talk) 08:47, 15 July 2021 (UTC)