Doug Miller wrote:
In article , "Chuck
Hoffman" wrote:
Sorry...neglected to answer your original question. I believe the
NEC
frowns on connecting across one phase of a 230V circuit to get 115V.
That
WOULD double the current on the neutral and result in a potential
overload.

Utter nonsense. It would do nothing of the sort.

In a circuit wired as he described, with (for example) a 10A load at
240V and
a 15A load at 120V, the current in the neutral conductor is 15A. (The
240V
load places *no* current on the neutral.)

Now add a 17A load at 120V on the opposite leg.

One hot leg is drawing 10 + 15 = 25A. The other is drawing 10 + 17 =
27A. And
the current in the neutral is 17 *minus* 15 = 2A.
Right on Doug,
Exactly thats the idea behind LOAD BALANCING! if the are equal there is
no current on the neutral. The whole idea of the neutral is a 0 volt
refrence only
We really try to achieve 0 volts potential across the neutral it is
technically a ground wire of sorts but is not the GROUND wire .
It isn't magic if you look at how they send it too you from the 'pole
pig' transformer they send L1 and Neutral (ever seen the ground wires
running down the light pole? That's were they ground the neutral at on
there side)
and then L2.
This is a simplification and is only meant to help illustrate the idea.
Please look into it if you want to verify any of this.
['pole pig' transformer step down]
the v's are windings and
the = is the seperator between the windings.

M1-vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv-M2 13.8kv or some other mains voltage
======================
L1-vvvvvv-N-vvvvvv-L2 240v split phase
| | |
|---240v---------|
| | |
L1--120v-N--120v--L2

Excuse my ascii.
The legs L1 and L2 are 180 degrees out of phase with each other that
means one should be at -120 and the other at +120 .
Notice that the Neutral is at the middle...that gives you a ZERO volt
refrence to ground. Why is it needed well we need a reference to ground
so we can use our appliances and not be subject varying voltage levels
from ground. A simple 240v circuit could actually be floating 1000v
above earth ground but between legs only have a potential of 240v but
since there is no ground reference it could be 1000v above earth ground
from just 1 leg, that would hurt a bit

Once again it is all a bit complex.
One could study for years and still be confused.
And ponder this, what is electricity, is it the just the flow of
electrons ....
or is it more to it, like maybe the electrons are just buckets that
travel the circuit slowly tranfering 'photonic energy', hint they are
never consumed in the circuit yet we do get power from the circuit
M.E.Farmer