Long story short, I wanted to measure the current draw on my electric oven. Initially I thought 240V was "two phase", however, from research, it's not; or at least how I interpreted what I read.
It has an oven light and clock, so I imagine it also needs 120V too to power them, however, I'm not interested in that portion since it's low current.
Tonight I used a clamp on current meter and measured (what I thought) both phases (separately) with various parts of the oven on at different times. In almost all cases, usually when the inside of the oven was on (boil or broil), both wires had the same current going through them (I only have one meter, so I couldn't check them simultaneously). But when I would power the top external burner, one "phase" had 15A, and the other "phase" had 8.3A.
My two questions are: do I add the current in both "phases" (i.e. do I add the 15A and the 8.3A for a total of 23.3A)? If I understand this correctly, the current in both "phases" should be equal but opposite polarity, so why is the external burner two different current values, whereas the inside of the stove (boil or broil setting) equal?
Just to elaborate on one portion of all this, if I set the oven to "bake" and all four top burners on high (a somewhat worst case current draw), the current on one "phase" is 40A, and the other "phase" is 33A. If I need to add these together, that would trip the 50A breaker, so I assume the total current isn't 73A.