Isn't the 'high' voltage that you have in the US for powering washing
machines and the like, phase to phase ? Seems like it wouldn't be that
hard for the power company to put in the third phase as well ? (I might be
totally adrift on this one - I'm not a power engineer ;-) )



It's a center tapped 240V transformer that feeds houses, washing machines
are 120V, but large loads like dryers, cook stoves, central AC, etc will
wire from hot to hot with a double pole breaker to get 240V, it's still
single phase.