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submitted 1 day ago by Sunshine@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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[-] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 23 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

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.

[-] hit_the_rails@reddthat.com 7 points 1 day ago

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.

[-] Yaztromo@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago

The difference I would note is that in North America those 240V plugs aren’t likely going to be on a 10A circuit — usually they’re going to be more in the range of 30A to 50A, as they’re typically designated in homes for use by a dryer or a range (and if you’re lucky, in the garage for an EV).

That’s not to say you couldn’t run a lower amperage 240V circuit — there just aren’t a lot of practical uses for doing so (I believe some air conditioners only need 15A 240V circuits, but in my (limited) experience these are usually hard-wired, and aren’t plug-in devices).

[-] hit_the_rails@reddthat.com 1 points 2 hours ago

We do have 15, 20, and 25A sockets, but these (especially the latter two) are quite uncommon (in the home) and most appliances which require more than 10A are hardwired on dedicated circuits such as for ovens, cooktops and ranges. Our typical clothes dryers just plug in though, with hardwired mainly found in laundromats and other commercial spaces.

this post was submitted on 23 May 2025
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