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Ralph Mowery

In article ,
says...

In my experience, the large consumers of electricity are getting 4,160 or 13,800 service and own their own transformers. Of course, they are actually small consumers compared to some industrial users who have their own dang substation! There are some older homes in the old high-income neighborhood outside of Birmingham that have
3 phase power. The reason being that at the time the homes were built, they needed a large air conditioning system 5 tons and up and at the time the homes were built, there were no single phase AC units of 5-tons and up available so the large homes were supplied 3 phase power. I serviced some of those old 5-ton semi-hermetic AC
units installed on a few of those classic grand old homes that were built in the 1950's and early 1960's. It was like working on commercial refrigeration and AC systems. At least no start relays and capacitors are needed for those 3-phase compressors. Those semi-hermetic compressors are also easily rebuildable and I did some
exchanges akin to installing a crate motor in a car or pickup truck. Those semi-hermetic compressors are quite heavy but I could always find a remanufactured unit. It was getting some help to carry the hunk of steel that was the biggest problem. I miss working. o_O

[8~{} Uncle Steel Monster

The company I worked for had to run 24/7 so we had 2 feeds from the
power company comming in from 2 directiions. I don't know what voltage
that was. They went into our own substations and buildings where we feed
a main ring of 13,200 volts to about 20 smaller substations in the plant
that converted mostly to 480 v 3 phase with 300 to 600 amp breakers that
feed about 40 places that had about 40 or 50 motor starters each in
them. Also a lot of places for 120 volts.