History of the Italian electrical system

&gt; grids were owned by many small regional power companies; thus, voltages and frequencies (42Hz was quite common) could vary a lot between each other<p>It always amazes me that some countries are still operating on multiple mains voltages and&#x2F;or frequencies while sharing a common plug standard, such as Brazil or notably Japan (where the 50&#x2F;60 Hz division apparently runs through a densely populated area)!<p>Fortunately most devices I bring with me when traveling don&#x27;t care and adapt to whatever, but being able to plug a 110 V hairdryer into a 230 V outlet without any form of adapter sounds scary.

There is DC utility service in SF, lagging NYC which decommissioned it in 2007.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;spectrum.ieee.org&#x2F;san-franciscos-secret-dc-grid" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;spectrum.ieee.org&#x2F;san-franciscos-secret-dc-grid</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jaygarmon.net&#x2F;2010&#x2F;11&#x2F;in-what-year-did-last-of-new-yorks-dc.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jaygarmon.net&#x2F;2010&#x2F;11&#x2F;in-what-year-did-last-of-ne...</a>

As an American I find it difficult to buy power adaptors for travel to Italy. You can buy them in the US but once you&#x27;re in Italy you discover they don&#x27;t fit about half the outlets. The best solution is to visit a hardware store in Italy and buy some adapters and power strips. These usually work.

Those Type L plugs are pretty convenient for things like power strips where you want to plug in several things on the same strip. Schuko plugs are big and clunky and take up a lot of space, making for longer, bulkier power strips.

My personal experience is that when you go to US or UK you need an adapter. When you go to Italy you need a lot of adapters.

This is a very interesting topic to me for some reason. I&#x27;d enjoy a website full of such explanations for a huge list of countries (I see that this website has some similar things.).<p>Also, I have found myself passively curious before about how far back you could go and find an outlet that you could plug a modern device into and have it work as expected.

The article is very comprehensive, and it even reports the rare biphase that some districts in Rome have, the only reason I know it is because many solar inverters works with this biphase, it can cause problems with car chargers (as the article reports) but also to some gas boilers that are very common in Italy.

Slightly (un)related also railways in Northern Italy used biphase supply until the 1970s. There is a nice Youtube video, let&#x27;s see whether I remember to dig out the link a bit later and edit this comment.

This is unreasonably interesting to me. Very neat old trivia.<p>Did other regions do the separate circuits&#x2F;billing rates thing for lighting vs appliances? That was entirely new to me!

I live in that part of Rome where we have 2 phases and no neutral.<p>I discovered being electrocuted and I could not understand why.<p>Fortunately heat pumps, &quot;stupid&quot; car chargers and other appliances work with no problems. But an installer told me that I could have had problems with smart car chargers and he refused to do the work.<p>Also Shelleys seem to work.

What’s exactly the deal with Brazil’s multitude of standards?

TIL why we have the Bipasso sockets! And why I have to bestemmiare a lot whenever I have to purchase a multipresa ciabatta. Thanks for sharing.