In article WMGTj.5083$ch1.2983@trndny09,
"James Sweet" writes:

It's not 110V, it's 240V, we simply split it with a grounded center tap
which gives 120V between each side and neutral, or 240V between the sides..

It's the regulation at 120V which people notice.
If you want to call it a 240V supply, then you
need to call EU supplies 400V or 415V. That's
equally misleading.

There's no transformer per house, except rural applications. Generally 5-10
houses are on each transformer, sometimes more. The problem with long runs
is that the voltage fluctuates substantially with large loads such as
central air conditioning. Standard North American residential service is 200
Amps 240V, I gather this is quite a bit larger than typical European
domestic stuff, so stretching it over 1km distance would require
prohibitively large cables or suffer from wide voltage swings. Makes more
sense to run 7200V down the street and locate a smallish transformer near
every half dozen houses.

The transformers are small in comparison, which gives poor
regulation in comparison (and as I said before, it's the
regulation at 120V which is the primary concern -- regulation
of 240V across 2 hots doesn't matter much for typical US 240V
loads).

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]