The origins of 60-Hz as a power frequency

Correct. You can get the same power with half the voltage by doubling the current.

The trouble is the wires. A given wire gauge is limited in its ability to conduct current, not power. So if you double to the current, you'll need to have roughly twice as much copper in your walls, in your fuse panel, in your appliance, etc.

Additionally, losses due to heat are proportional to the current. If you double the current and halve the voltage, you'll lose twice as much power by heading the wires. For just a house, this isn't a lot, but it's not zero.

This is why US households still have 240V available. If you have a large appliance that requires a lot of power, like an oven, water heater, dryer, L2 EV charger, etc, you really want to use more voltage and less current. Otherwise the wires start getting ridiculous.

This is not to say that higher voltage is just necessarily better. Most of the EU and the UK in particular has plugs/outlets which are substantially more robust and difficult to accidentally connect the line voltage to a human. Lots of people talk about how much safer, for instance, UK plugs/outlets are than US plugs. If you look at the numbers though, the UK has more total deaths per year to electrocution than the US, despite the fact the US is substantially more populous. This isn't because of the plugs or the outlets, US plugs really are bad and UK plugs really are good. But overall, the US has less deaths because we have lower voltage; it's not as easy to kill someone with 120V as 240V.

So there's a tradeoff. There is no best one size fits all solution.

I don’t know is toaster are close to max power draw, but kettles certainly are.

Most places with 240V regularly have 16A sockets, allowing a maximum draw of 3840W of power. That’s the limit. Cheap fast kettles will often draw 3000W and boil 250ml of water at room tempature in 30s.

Kettles in the US are often limited to 15A and thus max 1800W (usually 1500W) and take twice as long (60s)

Technology Connections has a great video on this: https://youtu.be/_yMMTVVJI4c

More current needs thicker wires. The average US outlet is wired for 120v15amp. 20 amp circuits are somewhat common, though 20amp receptacles are not. Certainly not enough for commodity appliances to rely on.

Going to more than 20amp requires a multiphase circuit which are much more expensive and the plugs are unwieldy and not designed to be plugged and unplugged frequently.

Houses are wired for 16A per circuit on both sides of the pond, with high-power appliances typically pulling around 10A to avoid tripping the fuse when something else is turned on at the same time. It's just a nice point where wires are easy to handle, plugs are compact, and everything is relatively cheap.

The US could have toasters and hair dryers that work as well as European ones if everything was wired for 32A, but you only do that for porch heaters or electric vehicle chargers.

You need the same thickness of wire for 10A regardless of which voltage you have. So with 230V, your 10A wire will let you draw 2.3 kW while someone with 120V and 15A wire would only get 1.8 kW and pay more for the wiring.

Having more current running through a wire means thicker wires. Higher voltage means less current to achieve the same power, so thinner wires for the same power. The tradeoff for higher voltage is it's more dangerous (higher chance of arcing etc).

You need thicker wires for the same power. Which is why Americans live in constant fear of power extension cords, and people in EU just daisy-chain them with abandon.

You have a 240v toaster?

Get better ones. I installed expensive LED lamps at home and they’re fine. The guys in the office picked the cheapest ones and I don’t want to turn these ugly things on.

Edit: Paulmann Velora are the expensive lamps at home.

Normal LED lightbulbs shouldn't flicker on standard 60Hz circuits. Do you have a dimmer switch or smart switch in the circuit? I've noticed these cause flickering that's visible on camera or out of the side of my eyes.

that means that either the breaker is faulty, or the power stabilizator in the lamp itself is junk.

What about if they flickered at 10^-15Hz?

Yes indeed, but the German-Swiss-Austrian 16.7 Hz system is many orders of magnitude bigger than the Southend Electrification! The path dependency is much more understandable in that case.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42973958

The frequency drifts up and down whenever demand doesn't exactly match supply. Higher demand slows the frequency down, higher supply speeds it up. This is actually the main way power companies know if supply and demand match, and if power stations have to ramp up or down.

The frequency changes are pretty small in normal operation, but on a clock that uses the frequency to keep time they accumulate. They only work reliably because power companies know about them and occasionally deliberately run a bit over or under capacity to make the average match again.

It's convenient to count 60 pulses to make a seconds pulse, then 60 of those to make a minute pulse, then 60 of those to make an hour pulse. Then 60 of those to make 2 and a half days :P

The same frequency, but not connected via AC. There are multiple DC and Variable Frequency Transformer ties between the various interconnections.

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

We have more than three interconnections that are not in synchronous connection to each other.

They can share power and are somewhat connected with HVDC interconnections however.

It is less and less likely... motor-based clocks are a thing of the past; hand appliances (like mixers and blenders) use either DC or universal motors to allow speed control. Even refrigerators feature "variable speed motors" nowadays, which means they are frequency-independent.

I think fans will likely be the last devices which care about frequency.. but new ones are often 12V/24V-based, with a little step-down modules.