There are types A (Japan), B (US), C (EU), D (India), E (France), F (Germany), G (UK), H (Israel), I (AU) and so on: in which all have a distinct plug shape and differences in prongs. Type A plug is just two straight prongs without a ground while Type B is nearly identical to A but with a ground connection and Type F has no ground attached to the outlet while Type E does, usually this is solved with a adapter (for electronics that are dual voltage and support 50/60Hz frequency).
However, household appliances are typically region locked in the sense of being singular voltage (like electric kettles, toasters, refrigerators, washing machines) since those are intended to not be made for travel (mainly for domestic use supporting only a single plug type) unless you have both an adapter and a transformer. You can’t just plug a 120v 60Hz Toaster (B Plug) onto a 230v 50Hz outlet (Type F socket) with an adapter alone as that’ll blow the fuse.
Most modern electronics (as in laptops, game consoles and smartphones) support dual voltage and frequencies but their default plug type is region locked, so if you’ve bought a PS5 in the UK importing it into the US (the default cable is Type G that comes with the packaging when plugging into a TV) unless you swap cable for a Type B plug but it’ll work fine. Why is there no unilateral plug type that’s “region free” when discussing plug types found in appliances.
The thing is… Europe also uses split phase. You get three phase power coming in at 380V in most houses on the, 415 in the UK. The 240V is what you get on a single phase.
split phase is 2-phase system but everyone else uses 3-phase distribution. in reality americans also use 3-phase distribution, this is where 207v 3-phase comes from (it’s 120v phase to neutral)
Ah I didn’t know about 2 phase systems. In my corner of Europe you’re on either 3 phases or 1 phase. 1 phase gets you 240V, 3 phases gets you 380V + ability to have different consumers on different phases to distribute the load if your house’s wired for that.
I’ve got a few outlets in my house that take this type of plug:
Built in the 80s so grandpa got soviet plugs lol
This is standard for US wiring – circuit breaker panels are designed to alternate which phase is fed to which circuit, with each circuit being the opposite phase from its neighbors.
Europe doesn’t use split phase.
US split phase uses a special local transformer (with a center tap) to split a phase voltage in half. Thus resulting in 240V and 120V, both derived from the same phase upstream. We don’t have such a complication. We use just the three phases that are transported all the way from the power plant, of course transformed down in voltage but not split.
The phases are 120⁰ apart. The voltages between the phases is 400V and the voltage from any phase to neutral is 230V (all voltages ± 10%). New buildings get 3 phase connections standard. Single phase is supplied to older houses which limits their power use to around 230V x 40A (current depending on the country) or around 9 kW.
380V is a decades old standard from the time when different European countries still had minor voltage differences