3 Phase vs. Single Phase Power Explained

 

I'm not an electrician. I'm in laundry equipment.
For some strange reason, even though I talk about laundry equipment all day to many people, I have a mental block about remembering the difference between 3 phase vs. single phase electrical power.
How does my mental block affect your hotel, laundromat, long term care facility, or any other business that uses laundry equipment? If you don't know the difference and understand what kind of equipment to buy when you need to replace your equipment you could cause damage to your equipment, your electrical system, or even start a fire.

So if you don't know the difference either, here is a quick explanation:

First you need to know what "phase" is. 
"Phase" is how you describe the distribution of an electrical load from an AC power supply over a period of time. Don't ask me to explain it beyond that.

Single phase power in a piece of laundry equipment usually means it has two wires that need to be hooked up. One is the wire with the power phase) and the other is a neutral wire.  Usually your household appliances use single phase power.

If single phase power has one power wire, then logically three phase power has three power wires.
Sometimes there is a fourth wire for a neutral as part of the circuit.
Almost all commercial buildings are wired with three phase power.

Practically what is the difference? Three phase power distributes power more evenly along any one or multiple circuits. It is also usually used when you have larger motors like AC or heating units, or multiple big machines that often operate at one time-like in a laundromat.

WHAT DO YOU NEED TO WORRY ABOUT?

Most new laundry equipment can be installed in either a single phase or three phase powered building because they have a transformer to "convert" power (convert isn't the proper term but I'll save the reason why for another article that explains what a transformer does) to the appropriate phase.
If you are dealing with older equipment or retooling an old store, know you can put a single phase machine in a three phase circuit, but you CAN'T put a three phase machine in a single phase circuit.
If you do that the consequences can be...well imagine all life coming to a complete stop and atoms everywhere exploding faster than the speed of light. 
Okay, maybe not that bad, but you get the idea. 

Ev
A Heck of A Nice Guy