That's "close enough" to truth for dealing with house wiring. Mostly I would add that the power on the street is three phase and you get two of the three phases delivered to the meter base. (That's what is messing with your mental model. Think of it like this:
Pole A B Pole
\ /
\/
+----- Ground
|
|
Pole C
Between any pole and ground you get 110/120 AC single phase Between any two poles you get 220/240 AC (treated as single phase)
It does sound like one of the substation's automatic breakers faulted out and improperly did a partial dump of the load (it should have tripped all three legs). I would guess that when all the power dropped our and then returned was the crew cleaning & resetting the switchgear.
As to how your house wiring is so unbalanced, that usually happens as circuits are added, moved, upgraded, etc. Each electrician figures that the existing wiring as a whole is balanced so his change won't make it to unbalanced. (They're supposed to calculate the load balances at the breaker box each time it could possibly change, but most don't. Indeed, for some the last time they did that calculation was on their license exam...)
Back in the '70s, during the Carter Energy Crisis, most utilities would help homeowners with the costs to have an electrician come out and re-balance their electrical load. (the more balanced the load was across the phases, the more efficient the generating & distribution system could operate.)
Re-balancing the electric load across both phases would also keep you from exceeding the max load on one side.
Janice (Not a licensed electrician so YMMV, etc. But I did study it quite a bit irt HVAC and datacenter applications...)
(no subject)
Pole A B Pole \ / \/ +----- Ground | | Pole CBetween any pole and ground you get 110/120 AC single phase
Between any two poles you get 220/240 AC (treated as single phase)
It does sound like one of the substation's automatic breakers faulted out and improperly did a partial dump of the load (it should have tripped all three legs). I would guess that when all the power dropped our and then returned was the crew cleaning & resetting the switchgear.
As to how your house wiring is so unbalanced, that usually happens as circuits are added, moved, upgraded, etc. Each electrician figures that the existing wiring as a whole is balanced so his change won't make it to unbalanced. (They're supposed to calculate the load balances at the breaker box each time it could possibly change, but most don't. Indeed, for some the last time they did that calculation was on their license exam...)
Back in the '70s, during the Carter Energy Crisis, most utilities would help homeowners with the costs to have an electrician come out and re-balance their electrical load. (the more balanced the load was across the phases, the more efficient the generating & distribution system could operate.)
Re-balancing the electric load across both phases would also keep you from exceeding the max load on one side.
Janice (Not a licensed electrician so YMMV, etc. But I did study it quite a bit irt HVAC and datacenter applications...)