Distribution voltages???????????

[Trampbag]

You and me both don't unnerstan them damn Engineers.

[thrasher]

A lot of the now non standard voltages date back to the 1920's thru the 1950's before things really started to "standardize". In fact the first attempts to standardize I know of at the distribution level were from REA. The government recognized that to get good pricing from manufacturers they needed to standardize as many components as possible. So REA came out with standard materials list that every co-op in the nation used. Suddenly a manufacturer could sell the exact same item to 1000 different Co-ops across the nation. This drove down the price per unit. As the investor owned saw the Co-ops buy cheaper, in many cases better quality, components they began to standardize also. However by then there were so many hundrerds of miles of existing line that you were stuck with maintaining. So a long story but; just like we are stuck with some roads that are just paved cow paths, we are stuck with some lines that were an engineers late night brainstorm.