Residential Outlets are 120V which most household small appliances and lights plug in. Oven ranges, laundry dryers, air conditioning units use 240V. Essentially they have two inverted phases: -120V, +120V to supply 240V across the two ends, usually with a NEMA 14-30 or 14-50 type plug.
I’ve always found this fascinating about Canada and the US. Both legs are +/- 120V potential to ground, and 240V between them. Here in Australia, everything in my house is 230V between active(hot) and neutral, both for plug in appliances and hard wired stuff like my heat pump (We call it a reverse cycle air conditioner here). Almost every house I’ve ever lived in has had one.
My old resistive clothes dryer just plugged into a standard 10A outlet like everything else. My current heat pump dryer uses 1/5 the energy though and has already paid for the extra purchase cost over the past three years.
Residential Outlets are 120V which most household small appliances and lights plug in. Oven ranges, laundry dryers, air conditioning units use 240V. Essentially they have two inverted phases: -120V, +120V to supply 240V across the two ends, usually with a NEMA 14-30 or 14-50 type plug.
I’ve always found this fascinating about Canada and the US. Both legs are +/- 120V potential to ground, and 240V between them. Here in Australia, everything in my house is 230V between active(hot) and neutral, both for plug in appliances and hard wired stuff like my heat pump (We call it a reverse cycle air conditioner here). Almost every house I’ve ever lived in has had one.
My old resistive clothes dryer just plugged into a standard 10A outlet like everything else. My current heat pump dryer uses 1/5 the energy though and has already paid for the extra purchase cost over the past three years.