Who's rewired their house for this hobby?

On 11/23/2014 03:15 PM, Holm Tiffe wrote: Well, we only have single phase 7200 V running down our street. This 7200 V run goes a LONG way, so an entire region that may be about a mile square is running off a single phase HV line, that branches over and over again into the neighborhood. Many of these feeds that go back into subdivisions are buried, and have pad-mount transformers placed every few homes. Our house has a pole-mount 50 KVA transformer that supplies just our one house, although that is kind of an accident of the layout. We are on the corner lot, and otherwise probably would have shared that transformer with a neighbor. Our LV drop is buried. So, what I'm saying here is there is a lot of high-cost infrastructure that would have to be ripped up (literally out of the ground) to go to 3 phase into the homes. Not to mention all the meters, service entry gear and breaker panels. I have a small machine shop in my basement, and some years ago it seemed like 3-phase would be real nice for that. Now that VFDs can run 3-phase motors so nicely off single phase power, it is no longer of much interest. Unless you desire to run a Cray 1 in your home (yeah, keep dreaming) there really isn't that much need for 3-phase power. Most machines that "require" 3-phase can actually be rewired internally to run off single-phase. One I can think of that won't is the KL-10B, which had a totally insane power system starting with a 3-phase transformer and rectifier. A mid-scale 370 like the 145 had a motor-generator set, which could be run off a large VFD. Or, replace the stupid MG and 415 Hz power supplies with off-the-shelf large power supplies running off single-phase 240 V.