Joethemechanic
Senior Member
- Location
- Hazleton Pa
- Occupation
- Electro-Mechanical Technician. Industrial machinery
So no matter what, you must always have at least two CONDUCTORS to have a complete CIRCUIT for electricity to flow. When you have single PHASE, the two conductors can be either line to neutral, or line to line. Either way, we still call it single phase because there is only one AC sine wave making current flow to the load. When you have 3 phase, you have three separate single phase circuits that are making current flow to the load: A to B, B to C and C to A. Each one of those taken individually would be a single phase, together they are 3 phase. You can ALSO have 3 phases plus a neutral, in which you still have 3 individual single phase circuits, but at different voltages. So if you have 208V 3 phase, line to line will be 208V, but line to neutral will be 120V.So whenever you have single phase you would never have 3 phase conductors obviously but either one or two phase conductors? But when using a disconnect you would never have only one phase conductor?