In Steve IA writes:

wrote:

I dont understand the 2 wire one wire thing. You got to have two
wires to complete any circuit. One furnishes the hot voltage, the
other is the neurtal/ground. I hope they are not relying on ground
rods to supply the ground. -OR- is this now a twisted cable (triplex)
(or would it be called duplex?)
I dont understand this....

That's a possibility. I'll ask the REC about this.

The most common arrangement in the US (with puuuhlenty of exceptions)
is three wires coming into the house from the transformer.

Two of them are "hot" and they're 180 degrees
apart in phase. The third is a neutral.

So it's possible you're only seeing the two hot
ones and the neutral is blending in the background.

(There's also a safety ground, which is usually terminated
in the, well, ground... near the house).

This lets you get both 120V and 240V service. The lower
voltage, which is standard in US outlets, uses one hot leg
and the neutral (and the safety ground). To get 240V, you
run both hot legs to the outlet or appliance (such as
an electric oven).

I've seen situations where one of the hot legs is _temporarily_
bypassed [a] and both parts of the house circuit are fed
by a single leg. The technician doing this _must_ make sure
there are no 240V appliances in the home and this is most assuredly
a very short term setup.

[a] a neighbor of my mother's in NYC [b], fed by underground cables
that zigged and zagged down the street. Half his home
was dark when he called her, and she called me... I checked
and saw that only half his panel was energized.

The utility came out and jumped things until they could
run a new cable a bit later.

[b] While Manhattan is apartment buildings/coops/other
large stuff, other areas of the city have private homes.

Think back to the "All in the Family", or nowadays, "Ugly Betty".

I have _NO_ idea what this would do to a meter that's
designed to read based on two hot legs. My gut feeling is
it should be a-ok, since the house wouldn't be guaranteed
to have the two legs be anywhere near an equal load...


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