I have a design question here guys – one that I’ve discussed briefly on the Chat line some time ago and Bill suggested that I put it on the general section. It concerns common household high voltage equipment mainly ranges and driers.
(A) Why do we persist in building 120/240V equipment?
(B) Why not design them to be 240V only?
Option (A) requires more copper wire, more metal in plugs and receptacles and, in older configurations, a safety compromise by combining the grounded and grounding circuits.
Heating elements in both ranges and driers tend to be 240V. Control systems/timers, fan motors and lights tend to be 120V. None of the latter need to be rated so.
With 240V available, it is far more efficient in terms of voltage drop to run the tumble-drier fan motor at the higher voltage and these motors are readily available. The control circuits would probably require only the substitution of a few, sub-penny components to make them happy with a 240V primary – the non-American ones (possibly greater in number, globally) already do so without a qualm.
The only problem I see is the light with the Edison Screw and the necessity for the shell to be a 0V to ground for safety. Therefore with this new configuration, do away with the Edison Screw and adopt a 240V Bayonet Cap lamp and double pole switching on the lighting circuit. This would hardly be expensive as eastern Europe produces large quantities of 240V BC oven lights for their own domestic market.
A 240V system would also be downward compatible to use the computer jargon. In present installations, especially those three wire ones, no neutral circuit would be required – the 0V line would be dedicated to grounding. In time, we could wean ourselves off this currently, compromise arrangement.
With best regards, what say you?
[This message has been edited by Hutch (edited 03-29-2004).]
