| Another poster suggested that he would have designed 120VAC to be made uo of two hots (60V | lets say each leg), the problem with that is, you would need to switch both lines at a | switch, complicating everything, (3-way switches for example), fusing would have to be | doubled (as in 220VAC single phase), so simply put, a hot/neutral setup isn't such a bad | thing. Same with HV (Canadian industrial is 347/600VAC 3 phase), you can supply an entire | row of HV 347 flourescent lamps with one hot, but if you had to do it with two hots, this | would complicate matters, unbalanced loads, etc....
It was I who suggested a "no neutral" wiring system. Actually someone else suggested it a while back on another thread and after thinking about the idea, it seemed better than anything else. The neutral seems to be a legacy thing resulting from a poorly thought out grounding system that ultimately had to be replaced.
Such a system would absolutely have to have a true grounding wire at all outlets and fixtures.
The idea is a center tap on the transformer secondary would be grounded so that the voltage potential between any hot and ground is reduced to lessen the effect of electric shock, and other hazards. The question next would be what voltage. If you used 120 volts between hot wires and thus had 60 volts between either to ground, you'd end up having electric stoves drawing 100 amps. If instead, you went with 240 volts between hot wires and thus had 120 volts between either to ground, then you'd have the current demand levels we actually have today for things like a stove, but less for things like lights and small appliances.
The NEMA 6-15R and 6-20R receptacles already work exactly this way now at the 240 volt level. There is no neutral connection at all. There is a grounding wire (not for carrying load current) and two hot wires that have 240 volts between them. The voltage between either hot wire and ground is only 120 volts.
What I would NOT have is multi-voltage system where you have 5 taps on a transformer to get more than one voltage to ground. This would make things a lot more complicated, and open up some oppotunity to abuse the design.
I don't know that I would necessarily pick 240 volts, were I to go back in time where I didn't have legacy equipment designed for a particular voltage to keep working. I'd probably go higher, like 300, 360, 400, or maybe even 480. But some of that is because I know the level of use we make of electricity today. Someone who thought about safety very clearly back in the late 1800's to design this would unlikely realize the high levels we use today, and might well have chosen a much lower voltage. If Edison had his way, we'd all be using 110 volt DC.
A three phase system would have to work similarly. The transformer would be wired in a 3 pole WYE or STAR configuration with the standard voltage between any 2 hot wires. So if the standard were 240, each hot wire would have 138.5 volts to ground. You can divide by the square root of 3 for any other voltage to get those values, and many of you probably have some of them well memorized. But the point is that there would be simply ONE VOLTAGE to deal with whether the power is single phase or three phase, and the voltage to ground would always be reduced from that (50% on single phase and 57.735% on three phase).
The disadvantages to the system that you point out are valid. It would require two pole light switches, and two pole circuit breakers or fuses.
But I disagree about the unbalanced loads you mention. Industrial power levels of 480Y/277 in US and 600Y/347 in Canada are not really any different than 208Y/120 except for the voltage. You still have to run the neutral wire around at the 120, 277, or 347 volt levels. With lights operating from 208, 480, or 600 volts, you'd need two hot wires but no neutral. You still have to balance things so 1/3 of the load is on each phase no matter which way you do it. It's just that with the no neutral scheme, you would have hot wire A going to 2/3 of the loads, hot wire B going to 2/3 of the loads (half the same as A), and hot wire C going to 2/3 (half the same as A, have the same as B). Just wire it as if you had delta power, but you can do that on wye.
In Europe, the voltage is now standardized on 400Y/230 for three phase. But they have the advantage that single phase service is one pole 230 volts, so they don't have issues of something designed for one voltage and get something slightly less when they get 2 out of 3 hots from a three phase system. But in the US (and presumably Canada, too), some people get 2 hot wires at 120 degrees phasing instead of 180, and thus they get a lame 208 volts to power devices that usually expect 240. And that can cause problems that range from reduced performance to equipment destruction (I have seen it happen).
In the 1900's my design would complicate 3-way light switches. But now days there is some trend to centralized relay switching of lights, even with dimming controls, and the switches are wired at very low voltage as merely control/signal devices. I'm working on a house design now and I plan to have all switches work this way, using momentary contact switches that go either up or down and spring back to the center when released. That way, all switches always have the expected on or off orientation. What lights I would have dimmers on would be based on the time the contact is made and go up or down gradually as the switch is held in position. Many systems today a smart programmed with scene lighting that at the push of a specific button changes many lights to pre-programmed levels for a particular mode or usage pattern. And then there are motion detectors that can ensure a light comes on in the room you are entering. Light controls can even be put in the bathroom shower using fiber optic cabling.
| The whole moral of the story, a properly wired outlet is important.
Of course. If a contact is expected to be neutral, then it absolutely must be wired that way, without exception. My design simply makes a system where nothing will expect a neutral. Things that do now are just a legacy of the past.