> which power standard is the "best" and how do we get rid of the rest? Not sure what's 'best', but getting rid of the 'rest' is likely to be expensive in term

> which power standard is the "best" and how do we get rid of the rest? Not sure what's 'best', but getting rid of the 'rest' is likely to be expensive in terms of capital investment and for a comparatively minimal benefit. To put it from a US perspective, I have a house built in 1940, and while most of it's been rewired to more modern standards, there are still a number of places where it has the original 80 year old wiring. What this means is that I have devices I can't plug into all sockets in the house, and even this inconvenience hasn't been worth the thousands of dollars and personal disruption it would cost to upgrade those circuits. There are cheaper workarounds and more pressing uses for the time and money it would take to make the change. It's this sort of reasoning that makes me hesitant to think that a unified global power standard is ever likely to happen, and that's even before considering some of of the infrastructure costs of making a change. That said, modern flexible power supplies and dual voltage appliances seem like they go at least a large chunk of the way to make the situation at least a little better.