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Whole house generator info needed


maxx

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More info on both the generator type / specs, and your electrical service and panel type,  is needed in order to advise you - and possibly / probably best to have a good electrician check it for you, it could save you $$.      

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It is very simple, but can be confusing. Typically in the US and Canada residential areas are served by dual phased system each being about 110 to 120 volts and 180 degrees apart from each other. therefore when combined one has 220 to 240 volts different.

Now what would happen if there were three phases, each 120 degrees different from each other well when you combined two of those phases rather than having 100% difference or twice the voltage you have only about 87% thereof.

So if each phase were 127 volts like in Mexico there is no second phase 180 degrees apart rather each phase is 120 apart and combining them gives you not twice 127 volts but 87% thereof So 127+127 =254 times 87% = about 220 volts.

Now that will not make sense to many of you and I am sure someone could do a better job explaining same than what I wrote here.

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If you have two phase system in my condo in Seattle. Each phase is 120 and when I want 240 volts I need to use both phases.

In Mexico, it is possible to be wired for only one phase. More have two phases and some of us who are energy hogs get all three phases as the case in my home. And in Mexico per government standard each phase much be 127 volts +/- 10%.

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You can call it what you want. In both HS general science classes and in College science classes one uses phase. Look it up in the dictionary . To get way too technical, if you look up leg of an electrical system, here is what you get

Leg as in “hot leg” refers to one of multiple hot conductors in an electrical system. The most common residential and small commercial service in Canada and the U.S., single split-phase, 240 V, features a neutral and two hot legs, 240 V to each other, and 120 V each to the neutral. The most common three-phase system will have three “hot” legs, 208 V to each other and 120 V each to the neutral. An older, but still widely used high-leg delta system uses three phases with 240 volts phase-to-phase for motor loads, and 120 volts for lighting loads by use of a center-tapped transformer; two of the phases are 120 volts to neutral. The third phase, the “high leg” of the system (also referred to as the "wild leg"), has 208 V to neutral and is not usually used for single-phase connections, so is distinctively colored. For larger commercial installations, 277/480 V or 347/600 V three phase is common.

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