Tim Wescott fired this volley in
:

I think you're missing the point.


no... I got the point. The real point is you don't know the current
capability of the circuit.

You WILL get the highest heating at the point of highest resistance (or
highest unbalanced inductive reactance) but you usually don't know where
that point is.

Just as a really simplistic example, consider a breaker in series with a
circuit that has (say) .1 ohm across a 220V line. Likely, the _breaker_
will be the point of highest resistance, and the heating will occur
there, not in YOUR "circuit".

You have to know the whole distribution system from end-to-end (at least
from the pole to your device) to know where that point is. That was a
point I didn't make in my original "blanket" statement, and it's the key
one.

LLoyd