Electrical conversion for European Appliances
in North America

Run of the mill consumer electrical equipment is cheap in Canada (especially Calgary, where there is no Provincial tax), so it is probably better to buy items such as toasters, irons and hair-dryers locally here.

Not available are hostess trolleys or electric hot stone (hete steen) barbecues.

All North American houses come supplied with 240 volts in addition to 120 volts. This is achieved by combining two 120 volt phases, and is required for high consumption appliances such as ovens, hotplates and tumble dryers. These have specialised plugs to provide 110 volts for the controls and 220 volts for the heating:

Counter-top receptacles are illustrated below:

However the 240 volt outlets are not standard fittings in private homes.

For your 220-240 volt appliances, there are several options:

1. Is the appliance dual voltage? Check the back. Usually some audio equpment, most new computers, some printers and other peripherals can be switched to 110/120 volts.
2. Is the appliance a lamp? If it has a standard size screw lightbulb fitting, then North American lightbulbs will fit, and all you need to do is change the plug.
3. Get a transformer. These can be obtained from Glazier's, who will fit the appropriate receptacle e.g. Dutch or British. Simple but expensive and bulky. Mr Glazier will rewind the coils for you to reverse the process when you take your North American appliances back to Europe, so it's not a waste of money.

Mains Frequency

North America has a 60 cycle (Hz) supply versus 50 Hz in Europe. This means anything with a motor will run faster here. This is not usually a problem with power tools or food mixers, but any clock mechanisms that rely on the mains current for synchronisation will be useless. However many appliances have clock mechanisms that operate independently from the mains frequency using internally generated timing signals. The author of this article has an old UK Betamax VCR whose clock runs fine over here.

Televisions

North American standard is NTSC which is incompatible with PAL or SECAM. However some European TVs come with NTSC decoders (only visible in the circuit diagrams), and it is worth checking to see if your TV has that capability.

It is possible to acquire multiple standard TVs and VCRs locally, but they are relatively expensive here.

The cable TV decoders in European televisions won't work with North American cable TV services.

Video Recorders

If you have lots of PAL or SECAM VCR tapes and you want to watch them over here, you'll either need to bring your VCR and a compatible television (for 220V supply - see above) or get a multi-standard VCR and a Europen TV.

DVDs

DVDs are published with region codes to prevent you from getting a copy of a movie in N America and viewing it in Europe before it has been released there. For instance N America is region 1, Europe is region 2, whilst region 0 DVDs can be played worldwide. The region and encoding are specified on the back of the box. If you have a collection of non-North American DVDs, you may want to consider bringing the player and its TV with you, and/or use a multistandard VCR to convert the signal from PAL to NTSC. Some DVD players, especially those attached to computers can be switched between regions up to 5 times before locking in.

Computers

These are usually dual voltage, but some older computers aren't. As computers do not consume a lot of current, a transformer is usually the best solution in this case. Alternatively, local computer shops sell replacement power supplies which are cheap easy to install. Calgary has good fast internet access via both cable TV (www.shaw.ca), phone company (www.telus.ca) and dedicated internet providers.

Mobile phones

All types of mobile phone service are available in Calgary, including GSM. However whilst most parts of the world outside North America use the 900/1880 GSM bands, the local GSM frequency is 1900 MHz. This means that standard GSM phones won't work here, although a local phone with your home SIM card will, if you have international roaming enabled. Some manufacturers provide tri-mode phones which will work everywhere on GSM systems. For more information on GSM click here. The local GSM service is provided by FIDO (www.fido.ca).

Appendix

Glazier Electric Ltd.
7134 Fisher Street S.E.
Calgary, AB.,
T2H 0W5
website: www.glazierelectric.net
e-mail: glazier@shaw.ca
Phone: (403) 283-4111
Fax: (403) 283-4320