In short, 50 Hz vs 60 Hz is more likely similar to Coca Cola vs Pepsi Cola.

The 50/60Hz would be largely historic/political - one deliberately

deciding to be different to the other.

Higher frequencies lead to smaller transformers and lower costs, perhaps
(locally) lower losses. The advantage of 50/60Hz was that it's outside
of the main audio frequency range, though I don't know whether that is a
coincidence or was designed that way. With current filter technology,
this is no longer really an issue. As far as I am aware, many vessels
operate on 400Hz, which suggests that there is a significant advantage
in not using 50/60Hz if one could start again.

Early in the history or electricity, Thomas Edison's General Electric
company was distributing DC electricity at 110 volts in the United States.
Then Nikola Tesla the devised a system of three-phase AC electricity at
240 volts. Three-phase meant that three alternating currents slightly out
of phase were combined in order to even out the great variations in
voltage occurring in AC electricity. He had calculated that 60 cycles per
second or 60Hz was the most effective frequency. Tesla later compromised
to reduce the voltage to 110 volts for safety reasons.

Europe goes to 50Hz:
With the backing of the Westinghouse Company, Tesla's AC system became the
standard in the United States. Meanwhile, the German company AEG started
generating electricity and became a virtual monopoly in Europe. They
decided to use 50Hz instead of 60Hz to better fit their metric standards,
but they kept the voltage at 110V.

Unfortunately,
50Hz AC has greater losses and is not as efficient as 60HZ.
Due to the slower speed 50Hz electrical generators are 20% less effective
than 60Hz generators. Electrical transmission at 50Hz is about 10-15% less
efficient. 50Hz transformers require larger windings and 50Hz electric
motors are less efficient than those meant to run at 60Hz. They are more
costly to make to handle the electrical losses and the extra heat
generated at the lower frequency.

Europe goes to 220V
Europe stayed at 110V AC until the 1950s, just after World War II. They
then switched over to 220V for better efficiency in electrical
transmission. Great Britain not only switched to 220V, but they also
changed from 60Hz to 50Hz to follow the European lead. Since many people
did not yet have electrical appliances in Europe after the war, the
change-over was not that expensive for them.

U.S. stays at 110V, 60Hz
The United States also considered converting to 220V for home use but felt
it would be too costly, due to all the 110V electrical appliances people
had. A compromise was made in the U.S. in that 220V would come into the
house where it would be split to 110V to power most appliances. Certain
household appliances such as the electric stove and electric clothes dryer
would be powered at 220V.

My opinion on this is that even though high frequency can save your cost in
manufacture, but it also cause significant loss in power transmission
especially for large scale power systems. So we need trade-off.

In the debate 50 - 60 Hz, Prof Trevor Blackburn treated the subject very well in the case of
transformers, cf below reference, appendix I.2. There are several loss components that actually
increase with higher frequency (some even increase proportional to the square of the frequency),
such as hysteresis loss, eddy current loss, losses caused by harmonics and skin effect.
Higher frequencies would limit the size of transmission lines and power
transmitted on high voltage transmission systems.

Most modern ships and all aircraft use 400Hz. The reason is E=4.44BANf. At 400Hz you need
only a fraction of the CSA of steel in your electric motors for the same voltage per turn which
makes the motors much smaller and lighter. So 60Hz is also marginally better than 50Hz for
motors and transformers in regard to steel content. I have also seen 1333Hz used in ships.

My opinion on this is that even though high frequency can save your cost in
manufacture, but it also cause significant loss in power transmission

From the presumably more informed source "Electricity Supply in the
United Kingdom" (UK Electricity Council, 1987), I note that standard
voltages of 240/415 (3ph AC) and 240/480 (3-wire DC) were recommended
for new installations in an Engineering Standards Committee report
(no.77) in 1916, and 50Hz as the standard AC frequency was recommended
in another report by the same body in 1904. The "national gridiron"
developed in the 1920s was certainly 50Hz.
So there's a considerable error in the implication of the above webpage
that in the UK a 60Hz system with 110V final voltage was changed to
50Hz 240V in the 1950s!
I also suspect the notion of Europe being at 110V till the 1950s is
wrong, and the idea that the change to 220V was for better transmission
efficiency is clearly absurd unless `transmission' is being used in a
very non-powersystems way to mean domestic distribution!


The claimed inefficiency of 50Hz interests me. I of course don't for a
moment believe a simple "20% worse efficiency" claim for lower speed
machines.
Perhaps a better bad point about lower frequency is the large size
(and material cost) of electrical machines in order to have the same
material loadings (e.g. flux density).
On the other hand, lower frequency can also be desirable in reducing
line reactances, thereby increasing transmission distances.
Presumably all manner of parameters, such as material costs,
desired goals (short/long term costs), load-factor (most of life nearer
no- or full-load) combine to favour different frequencies for different
situations, and we are simply forced to standardise on one for the
whole system: it's not at all clear that Tesla's choice must be the
best for a particular system in the present day.

Ben's question relates to differentiating between 50 and 60 Hz rather than
high vs low frequency. The answer is mechanical rather than electrical and
relates to the optimum combustion turbine speeds being 3600 rpm in North
American practice as compared to 3000 rpm in European designs.

Now, using lower frequency has a number of reasons: First with lower
frequency you obtain lower reactive voltage drops and higher transmission
capacity and less line reactive charging. Higher frequency results in
smaller size apparatus as Mr. Elder pointed out. Of course with higher
frequency skin effect and radiation away from the line is a factor. For
cables capacitive leakage becomes an issue for higher frequency. Moreover,
don't forget eddy and hysterisis losses increase with frequency.


The choice of 50 cycles in England came about gradually, as did the adoption of 240 volts.
Originally, say in the early part of the last century, low frequencies (such as 16-2/3, 25 and 33
cycles per second) were being used for traction. I do think there was even some 60 cycles in
England, and some 100 Hz. (As an aside, I heard that the English domestic use voltage has been
re-labelled 220 V, but has not really changed from the nominal 240 that it has been for years. Has
to do with tolerance bands . . . )

But for whatever reason, the winner that emerged in England was 50 Hz.

A similar story can be told in the US, except the outcome is different. There was (at least) some
50 cycle as well as 60 cycle in the US. The Hoover dam decided to generate at 60 Hz, and as it
happens, not all the participants in the project were 60 Hz companies. Los Angeles, or certainly
part of Los Angeles, was using 50 Hz. If they wanted to use power from the Hoover Dam they
were going to have to switch. I think that dates it to the late 30s.

And switch they did. IEEE Power Engineering Review had a fascinating story some years ago
about the clock-maker they hired to train other clock-makers how to swap motors in clocks. (I
tried to find him a few years after this article was published, but he had died in the interim. I did
have a nice chat with his widow, however.) At the end of the story, the Review tells how the local
power company had a warehouse full of old clocks and clock parts they could not use, and they
loaded them on a barge and dumped them at sea. Perhaps someone at IEEE can remind us of
the reference.

So for whatever reason, the US went with 60 Hz.

I had held back getting into this, but the Euro centric discussion has goaded me to get in and
inject some non-European history. I feel qualified to chip in my nickel's worth because my great
grandfather was involved in this very debate and discussion.

Surely, everything that has been said by you all is valid -- the speed, losses and efficiency and so
on. I do not agree with higher efficiency at lower frequency, and the fact that steam turbine
speed was a factor. There were no steam turbines then! However, Harold's question has to do,
in part, with history. So I say the following forgetting all the knowledge we have acquired from the
beginnings of this question.

Many of you may know that I grew up in Bangalore, India. I have been told -- please correct me if
I am wrong -- that The Shimsha hydro project built in the late 1910s (?) was a crowning
achievement by Sir. M Vishveswariah. The project of some 3MW (four Pelton
runners?) transmitting at 66KV ac 25 Hz. was, believe it or not, the highest voltage transmission
line in the world at that time. It was also the longest line, some 70 miles, primarily built to serve a
gold mine in Kolar. The executive engineer of the project was from my family. It was also said
(colonial sour grapes, perhaps) that the British colonialists wanted to use this as an experiment.
Doubts were expressed in Britain about transformer insulation (the distribution of surge voltages
across the windings was not understood till later) at 66 KV. The Maharaja of the state (and the
fore sight of Sir. M. V) was willing to put up the money (he wanted to light up the palace during
festival season) and it was a live experiment for the British to do a field test on someone else's
soil. As a small digression, I might mention of several transformer failures in this project.

Then came the question of DC or AC. Yes, as one of you have said, there was political rivalry,
and the British knew best and have to be different from others, particularly from the upstart
countries like America (words of my ancestors). When AC was decided (BTH was the
equipment supplier and the decision had a lot do do with lobbying in Britain, particularly the Royal
societies, I am told), the distance to the gold mine was too long to maintain voltage, i.e, to limit
voltage drop under varying crusher and shovel loads. Compensation was unknown then. Surely
the IZ drop is larger than IR drop. As a compromise, 25 HZ was chosen to limit the IZ drop (X=
2* PI* F* L). IN my ancestor's words, "the problem with ac is the bugbear of impedance. There is
no such problem with dc, you know. But the mines people want to use Induction motors, that
American invention-- Westinghouse, I believe. They claim that DC motors are not built large
enough, as big in HP as induction motors, and the commutators spark in a dusty atmosphere.
Because of this, we have to accept ac as a guinea pig to the British experiment."

I thought of sharing this piece of anecdotal evidence of history. I welcome any older engineers in
India in the state of Karnataka who might comment on this and put a point of precision. After all, I
am relating the stories I heard from my ancestors when I was but a lad.

In regards to the history of choice of frequency, I remember reading articles listing
various frequencies in American engineering journals from the late 1890's and early
1900's. Frequencies ranged from 15 cycles/second or less to 60+cycles/second.
But, at that time many central stations operated independently and could choose
whatever frequency they wanted.

I've never read about the reasons for final decision of 60 cycle/second in America,
but some part of it must have been do to the pressures to have a single frequency
in use to facilitate interconnection. Turbine speed may have been a reason. Steam
turbines would have been in use in generation around the same time this discussion
was first taking place as they were invented by Parsons in the 1880's and placed
into use in the following years.