ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades 220/230/240V 60Hz Systems

Looking at the list of domestic voltages and frequencies around the world on Wikipedia, how did countries like South Korea, The Philippines, Peru, Guyana and parts of Brazil end up with the European 220-240 voltage but with 60Hz American frequency? Also, is there any advantage using this somewhat odd combination vs. the usual 120v/60Hz or 230V/50Hz?

More importantly are these lists correct? I heard once that 220 volts at 60c/s is the best most efficient supply for motor loads

I'm not sure where you heard that, AnnMarie.
3 phase 400V motors certainly have advantages over their single phase counterparts, as in they are more efficient, quieter, are pretty much self-starting and draw less current for a given size of motor.
Of course, you do need to have a 3 phase supply to take advantage of this.

Where are you going to find 220V 60HZ? Long obsolete in North America, & a 3 phase motor will be most efficient compared to a single phase motor

Back in the 70's when I was there South Korea used 100/110 volts 60Hz with US type plugs and sockets. They have now upgraded to 220v with Schuko type plugs and sockets. Presumably changing frequency as well would be too much of an upheaval.
I imagine the same or similar has happened elsewhere.

I imagine the Philippians are simply reflecting the influence of the Americans over the last century. Why they dropped the 120 volts and only use 240 may just be because it is a more efficient use of the copper.

As for the voltages. FPL says this in their service standards



So you see all of those voltages are within the nominal 120.

True, the funny thing is that American-style type A/B plugs and sockets are still being used here in the Philippines at 230V making things fun for equipment imported from North America if you're not careful

For those interested, here is a PDF document with the specifics of the utility (Meralco) serving the capital Manila and surrounding area.

They sure have some odd voltages there!

In Austria and Germany there's been a push for several decades to get rid of any single-phase 2-wire services in favour of 3-phase 4-wire. In both countries (that share a common VDE legacy 1938-1961) direct metering is only available up to 63 A and single-phase services were usually only provided up to 35 A/230 V (as of 2015, Vienna Grids is the only operator that I'm aware of still providing the option of single-phase connections, requiring 6 mm2 meter tails and usually fused at 25 A). The current standard setup for homes and apartments in Austria is 35 A 3-phase. In Germany, some grid operators require 63 A as the only size for domestic connections, others prefer smaller services.

Larger single-phase services are frowned upon as it seems that our grid operators don't believe in load balancing over several services and require each service to be balanced (i.e. the circuits being evenly distributed across all three phases).

Back to the topic of motors: the higher the frequency the smaller motors (and transformers) can be, that's why 400 Hz is used commonly in aircrafts. Apparently the European 50 Hz just became a de-facto standard by evolution, whereas the US 60 Hz were chosen for practicability and low-flicker arc lamps.

All very interesting I heard that 220V 60c/s was best on some TV documentary a few years ago I was a bit surprised but just assumed it must be true if the TV said it! Ah well maybe I was a bit naive. As for Austrian and German supply's how do you run a whole house on 25 amps supply? In my house our peak load is about 45 amps admitidley only for maybe 10 mins a day and not everyday in fact only 2 or 3 days a week normally

A house will usually have 3-phase so assuming mainly 1-ph loads you have 75 A available at 25 A per phase. In a flat with gas-fired combi boiler and gas cooker you'd be hard-pressed to exceed 25 A single-phase, I've never managed to do that. I suppose you could try running washing machine, dishwasher and kettle at the same time but that's a rather rare occasion and both washing machine and dishwasher cycle the heating elements on and off.

Now in Italy with their 15 A 1-ph supplies it gets scary... electric oven and immersion heater are enough to plunge the house into darkness, so don't shower while something's in the oven!

I do have to say I'm a bit wary adding an electric oven to the 25 A 1-ph supply we've got here (there's been talk about that lately because the new gas oven is much worse than the old one even though the door of the old one had to be wedged shut with a wooden stick held in place by a half-open drawer) but if we avoid running oven and dishwasher at the same time we could even do that I guess.

I see now if you have 3 phase available as long as you don't put the oven on the same phase as the shower it works fine. I think you might have to get the poco to uprate your supply otherwise I think you will need to get a decent supply of candles in I really can't understand why European countries don't to the same as the UK and have an 80 or 100 amp supply to a house there's never any overload issues unless you live at the end of a very long line and that's rare

Over here in NZ, AnnMarie, stoves out in the country were fed with 2 phase 400V, mainly to make sure that when you turned the grill element on, it wouldn't knock half the house out during winter.

I personally think that fusing a 240V house at 80 or 100A is out-landish, sure the houses are possibly bigger over there, but I'd struggle to name any house here that has anything more than a 63A single-phase fuse feeding it, let alone 100A.

You mention about being at the end of a spur-line, it is up to the local supply authority to provide either a tap-changer transformer (that changes the voltage when the load on it increases) or a higher HV voltage into your EOL transformer to take voltage drop into account.

Large supplies are really unnecessary unless you run a bunch of electric showers and other huge loads. Cookers and hobs have the option of connecting them to 3 (cookers) or 2 phases (most hobs), as do all larger electric water heaters and instant showers. I've heard of people who successfully managed to live with a 25 A 3-phase supply, a free-standing electric cooker and a 21 kW electric shower without ever blowing a main fuse! That's an extreme case and it was probably sheer luck for them but 35 A 3-phase already provides a lot of power. If you've got a gas cooker/hob and a combi boiler or central heat and hot water you're extremely unlikely to exceed a total load of 5 kW in my experience!

To Trumpy: I think I said that our highest total load never exceeds about 40 amps there are usually 2 of us in the house and that load is only if one of us is showering and the ovens on and a few lights and other small items so yes we could live with a 63 amp feed however if we had a full size family with several people all with TVs and lighting on it might be pushing it.AutoTap changing is normally only on the 33/11 Kv tranny the local poletop trannys out in the sticks are usually offload changing by manual switches maybe NZ practice is alittle different. Whatever system you got as long as it works it don't matter if its 3 or 1 phase.

240/415Y 60Hz would be the global standard in an ideal world, unfortunately we seem to be using less premium combinations.

Here in the US half of new homes are fused at 200amps, even the small 1,200 foot homes.

Here in Norway the common voltage are 230 at 50Hz single or 3-phase supplied from a delta wound transformer, that makes it without neutral. The line between the last house, and the transformer may sometimes be more than 1000 meters (=yds?) The older houses usually have small fuses, maybe only 25A single phase at 1000 sq feet.

A completely new system would have 230/400V with a neutral. (if the not connected to an old supply of 3*230V) Usually all houses has 3 phase (apartments: single phase) and the the system should be designed to be able to carry a load 10/6 of the calculated need.

This thread started with why 230V at 60 Hz, The chosen 50Hz in Norway today is based on what the neighbors use, but long time before we connected the countries together, 50 Hz was not flickering, but the lower frequency, the lower loss on long lines. Svalbard used 25Hz for a while, Halden used 40Hz, but thats all history.

I wonder about what the standard would have been if we started on today. What about 500V at 400hz in the local system and a DC high voltage grid?

We did a lot of 400 hz in computer rooms and that comes with it's own problems. To start with you really start needing very finely stranded wire because the current is starting to be a skin thing and not flowing through the center of the conductor. The main advantage is smaller transformers. I suppose motors could be smaller too because they used 400 hz for naval servo systems and that was the main reason there.
Why North America chose 60hz and Europe chose 50, I can't answer but the center tapped single phase (120/240) was seen as a safety thing when Westinghouse and Edison were fighting over AC v DC. In those days it was really more like 110/220. These days most motor driven stuff really struggles at 110 v and likes 120 a whole lot better..

I suspect 50 vs. 60 Hz is mainly related to decimal vs. pre-decimal (multiples of 6) thinking and derived from the generator RPMs. A two-pole 50 Hz generator runs at 3000 RPM, a 60 Hz one at 3600. Europe was already pretty much metric and decimal by the time electricity came around, except for the UK.

Was the 120/240 V 1-phase developed alongside Edisons 3-wire DC? It'd seem more logical that it was a reaction and an attempt to use existing DC mains and existing equipment (anything that'd run on both DC and AC) during the conversion from DC to AC, at least to me. That's just an educated guess though. The only thing I do know is that all mains voltages in the world were likely derived from the operating voltage of series-wired arc lights, i.e. multiples of 50-60 V.

Edison, who was more of a marketeer than a scientist saw DC as a system that would involve lots of generators spread across the city, all sold by him. Tesla and Westinghouse envisioned the grid and a few very large generation facilities providing power to a wide area of customers, using transformers they sold. Tesla even dabbled with the idea of transmitting power over the air.
They were both advancing their plans at roughly the same time though. (1880s)
I don't think there were any large scale DC distribution networks but Edison did sell a lot of generators for individual mansions, offices and factories.
By the time large scale distribution systems came online, AC had won the fight.

Edison, who was more of a marketeer than a scientist saw DC as a system that would involve lots of generators spread across the city, all sold by him. Tesla and Westinghouse envisioned the grid and a few very large generation facilities providing power to a wide area of customers, using transformers they sold. Tesla even dabbled with the idea of transmitting power over the air.
They were both advancing their plans at roughly the same time though. (1880s)
I don't think there were any large scale DC distribution networks but Edison did sell a lot of generators for individual mansions, offices and factories.
By the time large scale distribution systems came online, AC had won the fight.

Edison was also a rather shameless self-promoter.
He offered a HUGE discount on generation equipment to any company that would put "Edison" in their name.

Consolidated Edison...Commonwealth Edison...Ohio Edison...etc.

Edison's biggest invention was the "intellectual property agreement". Most of the stuff he is credited with inventing was actually developed by the large staff of young engineers he employed. He had people working on every thing he ever dreamed up. Most went nowhere but occasionally something worked out. Then he had the marketing skill to bring it to market. It is really not unlike companies like Microsoft and Apple.

From what I've read 3-wire DC was already an attempt to cut voltage drop-related losses in local-scale DC distribution networks spanning roughly the size of a neighbourhood. The first DC systems were plain 2-wire. In the Budapest Electrotechnical Museum you can see the very first working transformer, which is a symmetrical three-phase transformer so I'm fairly sure 1-phase 3-wire AC came later but the question is how much later.

120 V AC never made an awful lot of sense TBH. The voltage is too high to be considered safe (the limit is 50 V AC or 65 at the highest) but too low to drive substantial loads without requiring fairly high currents and large conductors. Higher currents also cause higher voltage drops. Just to give you an example: a cooker (range) with three sets of elements each connected to one phase and neutral of a 230/400 V system could be connected using 14-4 NM cable using a 3-pole 15 amp MCB. The same load connected to 230 V requires a 50 amp MCB if full functionality is required (although most European countries factor in load diversity as it's unlikely that all elements will draw full current at the same time as the elements are thermostat-controlled) and allow for 25 or 32 amps to be used).

Mains voltage is always a compromise between insulation and low currents. Frequency is mainly a compromise between equipment size (transformer cores, motors and generators) and motor/generator RPMs, the higher the frequency the more poles a slow-running motor or generator needs to have. I think we'll likely be stuck with 50 and 60 Hz forever since changing a large grid's frequency seems pretty much impossible unless the grid is split up into smaller sections temporarily DC-coupled and since more and more equipment accepts more than one frequency I can hardly see such a conversion being feasible either. Voltages on the other hand may change, as South Korea has shown. As far as I know the country changed over from 120/240 V 3w to 230/400 V 4w in a period of only two or three decades (1970s to 90s).

Regardless of frequency, 110 vas the maximum practical voltage for the Edison lamp with a carbon filament.
That is the only practical reason I see for 110V

The North American 60hz 480V system motors are actually compatible with European 50Hz 400V motors and vice versa.

dsk

I don't see how that is even workable.

I think a 60hz motor would still run at 50hz but if it is an induction motor it will run hotter and slower.

Back in the dim and distant i went to the US on holiday my brother took his electric razor with him it had a switch to select either 110 or 220 volts working but nothing to say it would be suitable for 60 cycles mains he used it and it ran a bit faster he said he got a better shave than back at home I did consider building a small 50 to 60 cycle converter but in the end thought it was more trouble than it was worth

With the availability of cheap switcher power supplies that have a wide mouth, using things internationally with no changes at all is becoming common. When we went to New Zealand, all of our electronics made the move seamlessly. I just needed a power plug adapter that changed the NZ plug to a NEMA 5-15 We plugged a cube tap into that and everything we had plugged right in.

That is correct, the 50Hz motors does hoften have more iron (are heavier) so temperature monitoring may be a good idea.
The speed of an induction motor will follow the frequency!

That's exactly the point of using higher frequencies, especially the 400 Hz in aviation. Transformers and motors can use much less iron and that means less weight. On the other hand if you need slow-running motors they need to have more poles than their 50 or 60-Hz equivalents.

When I was working in the test dept of a transformer manufacturer we made some 3 phase 400 cycle transformers they were tiny even the 5 KVA ones were easy to pick up not lime the 50 cycle ones which weighed a ton not literally but still heavy

Yep,
This is why the switch-mode power supply has become so popular, the higher the frequency, the smaller the transformer you require.
I still have a pet hate of them things though, especially as far as things like RFI goes.

The loss in the lines are greater with higher frequencies, that is one of the reasons for lo HZ train supply.
The other reason might have been at 16 2/3 hz a single phase motor works better.

I believe we have seen 25 and 40 Hz systems too, but not any more? Niagara falls might have had a 25Hz station?

dsk

I think the main reason for 16 2/3 Hz was the motor issue, apparently large universal motors have issues with brush arcing at 50 Hz or more.
25 Hz definitely existed and in some rare instances still exists. Austria has a long-ish electrified narrow-gauge (1000 mm) railway line that was electrified in 1910 using 25 Hz. Originally the power station at Wienerbruck also supplied several villages along the line with electricity, today it's only for the railway itself but still 25 Hz.
For the most part Europe uses three different railway power systems, 15 kV 16.7 Hz in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Sweden, 1.5 or 3 kV DC in a bunch of countries (France, possibly Belgium, Italy, maybe Spain, the Netherlands, Poland, parts of the Czech Republic etc.) and 25 kV/50 Hz (parts of the Czech Republic, the UK, Hungary, high-speed lines in Spain, etc.). I suspect 50 Hz AC is only common in countries that started late into the electrification process, mostly after WWI. Apparently the first Hungarian electric locos used ridiculously complex electromechanical control systems while the 16 2/3 Hz ones simply used transformers with a bunch of taps (very efficient) and the DC ones used series resistors.

In the US, Amtrak (the national passenger rail service) operates a big 25Hz single-phase system, dating to the 1920s, for traction power between Washington DC and New York City, and between Philadelphia and Harrisburg, PA. It includes two dedicated 25Hz hydroelectric generators at Safe Harbor Dam on the Susquehanna River, motor-generator frequency converters in PA and NJ, and more recently, solid-state cycloconverters

See:
Amtrak 25Hz traction power system

On railways 25kV 50Hz network frequency AC is normally found on high-speed lines as you need the high voltage to get sufficient power transmission to the trains.

A TGV set typically consumers about 8 to 10 megawatts, depending on the configuration. There were high speed test sets consuming 19 MW!!

In Ireland 1.5kV DC is used in Dublin's DART which was only electrified in 1983/84 and the Luas tram system which is a relatively modern Alstom Citadis based system uses 750V DC

The UK uses:

National Rail: 25kV 50Hz Overhead and 650 V - 750 V DC 3rd Rail.

1.5kV DC overhead Tyne & Wear Metro
750V DC overhead - Trams
750 DC 3rd rail bottom contact - Docklands Light Rail DLR
630V DC 4th rail - London Underground (top contact)

550-750 V DC are fairly common for urban systems where lines are relatively short and in the case of 3rd rail systems voltage drop is limited by the huge cross-section. Trams also need to be lightweight, installing a huge transformer isn't really an option. So low-voltage DC was a fairly natural choice, often directly fed to motors with series resistors and load resistors for generative braking. Only in the late 1970s solid-state motor controls were introduced but by then 550-750 V DC had already been well-established as the standard voltage for tram, underground and metro systems. These voltages are also less of a safety concern than 10+ kV and require much smaller insulators, keeping appearances in city streets tidier.

Why the DART uses 1.5 kV DC is beyond me, I think at that time there was already an international agreement to use 25 kV/50 Hz for railways unless there's a legacy system already in use in that country.

Austria is generally 15 kV/16.7 Hz for railways (introduced around 1900 for the Vienna - Bratislava interurban railway that ran as a tram in both cities and as a proper railway outside, changing locomotives from DC to AC in the outskirts of each city) but there are different systems - 650 V DC for most trams, 750 V DC for the Vienna Underground (both 3rd rail bottom contact and overhead wire), 850 V DC for the local railway Vienna - Baden (WLB) running with beefed-up Duewag tram cars and Bombardier LRVs and a few other DC systems for older electrified regional train lines. All new electrification projects are 15 kV/16.7 Hz except trams and underground systems.

Since all new rail vehicles use VFDs to drive the motors the frequency doesn't really matter anymore. Either the current is rectified at the substation and converted to variable-frequency AC inside the locomotive/motor car or it's rectified and converted to AC inside the loco. AC has the huge advantage of being able to use transformers and much higher voltages, limiting current and voltage drop. DC mainline railways use scarily huge overhead wires!

DART has some odd systems. The original trains used on it were made by Linke Hoffman Busche but the traction motors and controls were done by GEC - they'd date from 1983 or so. Those coaches were later refurbished by Siemens and the rest of the fleet was built by Tokyu Car of Japan.

The DLR in London also used Linke Hoffman Busche but they're light rail.

In general Irish Rail specs tend to be quite different to continental Europe as the networks don't and won't ever interconnect. The gauge is wider 1600mm as opposed to 1435mm and there are significant differences in signaling systems. Ireland used track circuits with various frequencies to indicate the status of the next signal and speed. The system used on the DART actually allows for automation. There's no indication of any movement towards harmonised European signalling.

The only international services are to Northern Ireland and they just follow the same standards as we do so it doesn't make any difference.

I'd say they used 1500V DC because it was practical. The Tyne & Weir (Newcastle) Metro dates from around the same era also used 1500V DC

The recent tender for DART vehicles specified dual voltage 25kV AC & 1500V DC as there will be new electrified services put in place around Dublin.

There's some vague idea of electric intercity services to Cork and possibly Belfast. There's never been any long distance electric trains here. At present all long distance rail is diesel operated mostly by relatively new Hyundai built DMUs, except on the two more serious imywedify routes Dublin-Cork and Dublin-Belfast which use push-pull diesel with fairly high spec coaches. Top speeds are only 160km/h and the trains are only spec'd for up to 200km/h theoretical absolute max but the network limits them to 160.

It's a low density pop, the longest journeys less than 3 hours and there's no transcontinental type links so in generally it's a pretty low speed setup by European standards.

But I'd say all of the above is why they didn't really pay much attention to pan EU systems.

Well, there is ETCS but I suppose the implementation will take a while.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Train_Control_System

Los Angeles ran 50 Hz until 1948. They switched over to 60 and it cost 34 million 1948 USD to get their 765,000 customers online. https://gizmodo.com/before-1948-las-power-grid-was-incompatible-with-the-r-1683629042

Japan has the same problem and it's just too much to unify the line frequency,

Interesting!

Thanks for the info!

Bill

Glad to contribute, Bill. Domestic and overseas configurations got me over to this this group. I'm not a Electrical Contractor, but contractors have a firsthand knowledge of electrical systems and are the ones to listen in on. My past work involved calibration of electrical measuring equipment.

Gene

Interesting reading !!

Thank you for the education !!

Japan's 50/60 Hz dilemma splits the country in half, Tokyo is 50 Hz, Osaka 60 Hz.

One way around it is convert to DC using HVDC stations to tie the grids together The Shinano Frequency Converter station is one example.

It does limit how much power can be transferred, but changing one side to the same frequency as the other is logistically far worse than LA in the 1940s.

In fact I'm glad LA took care of it before development really got going.

Apparently Japan was first electrified by the British, who use 50Hz.
Then the US bombed the country (something about a little picadillo called WW2).
When the US rebuilt the destroyed parts of the electric system after the war they used the 60Hz US standard frequency.

Thus arose the unique situation that if your job transfers you from one end of the country to the other you may not be able to take all of your appliances with you to your new home.

This is where switcher power supplies come to the rescue. I was surprised that virtually everything I wanted to take to New Zeland had inputs 100-250v 50/60 hz. All I needed was a plug adapter and a cube tap to plug everything in.

I remember reading a story about Siemens (50 Hz) and GE (60 Hz), well before the war. That seems more likely to me! I also believe that most Japanese equipment is dual-frequency rated for that very reason. Make sure that all transformers and motors have enough iron to run on 50 Hz and if running speed of something with a motor is critical make it a belt drive with two pulleys or use a DC motor.

Actually the problem started back in the 1890s and even after the war it continued. The allied occupation (well actually the US occupied the entire country post war) did not change that. Outlet voltage is still 100V vs the North American 120V. Since some Japanese domestic electronics can have problems at 120, 120 to 100 V stepdown transformers are still sold.

This article is a good summary of how and why it happened from a source in Japan.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2011/07/19/reference/japans-incompatible-power-grids/

Thanks for the link.

I'm always interested in learning new things...and correcting things that I was taught long ago.
Apparently my history teacher told us the wrong thing (once again) back in school.