WI: Worldwide standard for electricity?

Background:

During the early development of electricity in the 19th century, all sorts of frequencies and voltages were used for various reasons. The result is that we don't have one worldwide standard for electric power at the mains.

However, what if during the early development, that via committee, market forces, or some other means, that there was one worldwide standard for electricity? You can take this to include the plug as well if you wish, though that may be a bit harder to make happen.

I wonder about the subtle impact this could have on economies, especially when electric use becomes more important in the 20th century. It could also have an impact on the inventors and their related companies. I wonder about what major changes this could induce down the road in world history.

For the sake of discussion let's say we start on 50hz and eventually reach ~230V as the voltage main electricity, with 3 phase being more prevalent (but not absolutely required) in areas that it would otherwise not be in when that comes along. Feel free to use a different setting as well if you think it would have a different impact.

One small shift I can already see: Japan would be able to better cope with the power situation after Fukushima as the entire country would be under one frequency.
 
The biggest impact is probably that the market for appliances is larger. No more country specific consumer electronics. Over all this is probably a boon for the US's commercial manufacturing who can now export the same lines of products everywhere and bad for smaller factories making say British-exclusive electronics.

As far as the size and function of consumer goods go, the world will probably be far more standardized than it is now since everything will have been in a single market for decades.
 
The best way for this to occur IMO is with Napoleon being more successful. He brought metrication and standardisation. A French Europe will have more than enough economic pressure to force their standards on the globe. Not sure how you get the Brits to sign up to it too, if you get a British Republic or something then I guess it could work.

The two main advantages to this are easier globalisation of electronic goods, and easier trading of power between nations, probably resulting in some sort of global power grid. I don't think the first part matters all that much, it didn't take long for it to become very easy to sell and take goods abroad.
 
The problem with a world standard for electricity is that no-one has the power to enforce it.
 
The problem with a world standard for electricity is that no-one has the power to enforce it.
To a certain extent this doesn't matter; after all, everyone ended up adopting essentially two standards in terms of voltage and frequency IOTL, despite this (yes, I know that there are technically a whole bunch of standards, but from the point of view of devices there are basically two). It's not completely inconceivable that everyone ends up converging on the same voltages and frequencies instead of converging on basically two. Just switching the United States to using 240 V/50 Hz would probably do this, since most of the 120 V/60 Hz countries are heavily American-influenced.

Of course, how you do this is another question...and this does nothing about plugs, which are really unlikely to be standardized (there's a continuing trend of countries adopting new plug standards for no really good reason IOTL, after all)
 
The problem with a world standard for electricity is that no-one has the power to enforce it.

You don't need power to enforce something, you need incentive too.

Few countries are going to willingly exclude itself from a global market. Especially since the countries that would be most willing to do so (poorer ones) are less likely to not be importing the material and labour that are implementing their grids anyway.
 
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