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Comment by jraph | Hacker News Reader

(edit: this comment is quite useless, I need to leave it to keep the discussion understandable)

Interested in the answer which I don't have.

That said, UK is wired to the continent, which runs at 230V, 50 Hz.

Everyone runs at the exact same frequency (same fluctuations) at any moment across the whole continent for technical reasons. (edit: UK is actually not synchronized with the continent, I didn't know that either).

I guess having the about the same voltage as the rest of the continent is at least convenient (edit: apparently it's not exactly the same?).

So I guess the question is US vs the European continent.

Curious about the rest of America (North and South).

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The uk grid is not synchronized with the european grid, it is just HVDC interconnected.

You are right about the european grid, it is synchronized

North America is generally on 220-240V split phase with NEMA compatible plugs. In Mexico, the plugs are often ungrounded and only compatible, not identical to NEMA. In my house in the US I have mostly 120V circuits with a few 240V for appliances.

Brazil is a bizarre mess of 127V single phase in most of the south and 220V single phase in the rest. They are supposed to use euro-style grounded receptacles but often have installed euro and NEMA bi-compatible plugs at 220V or 127V. A lot of 220 circuits only carry 8-10A.

Argentina uses the Australian style receptacle with 220V 50Hz.

I'm not sure about the rest of South America but I think Uruguay and Paraguay are compatible with Argentina and the rest are on 60Hz and generally 220V.

I'm surprised nobody mentioned Japan, and its varied system.

UK interconnections to the continent are via HVDC links; the UK grid is not synchronous with the continental grid.

It's almost North America (and some friends) vs rest of the world, really:

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

Picking a small point from your comment I find interesting, the voltages vary considerably across Europe depending on all sorts of factors.

In the UK at least it's from around 216 to 253 volts. Mine is sitting at 249 now.

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