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It's often referred to as "two space stations flying in close proximity". One Russian, one American. 28VDC on the Russian side, 124VDC on the American.

Rumour has it that there's bolts with imperial thread on one end and metric on the other holding them together in the middle..

It's a matter of perspective. You could say that building an interoperable power supply was a pragmatic solution to multiple independent engineering teams building modules. This approach allows individual teams to use power systems they are familiar with so they can focus on actually building the ISS.

I know little about it but the MVPS sounds like one of the ISS' many accomplishments.

You probably have multiple plug types in your house. Single phase, two phase, maybe three phase, groundless, etc. They might have similar requirements.