dougrainer wrote:
"Should this be wired in as a 50 AMP 120/240 volt ac single phase".
NO, It is 2 phase. If you attempted to wire to the single phase, you would NOT get 230/240 across the 2 hot leads. Doug
Standard residential (and RV) supply is single phase, with the neutral taken from a center tap. If you look at the electric utility's transformer for a hose (where it's visible, i.e. on an overhead line), you'll see that it connects between one of the three (high voltage) phases and neutral in practically all cases, hence it's only a single phase supply. The two hots do end up being 180° out of phase with respect to each other when referenced to the neutral line.
(There may be a very few electric utilities that use a delta rather than a Y configuration, where the transformer would be between two of the phases, but that's not the usual arrangement. At any rate, the output from the single transformer is still single phase.)
Any two-phase application I've run across has been in things like control systems with servomotors, and the two phases are typically around 90° with respect to each other. Electrical utilities do not generally supply actual two phase power—it's either single phase or three phase. (Of course, with three phase power, the three hots phases are 120° with respect to each other. 120V hots, with respect to neutral, end up being about 208V with respect to each other.)
