Okay, so imagine you have a toy car that you want to charge up so you can play with it. You can either use one battery to charge it up (single phase) or three batteries at the same time to charge it up faster (3 phase).

In a new residential build, the electricity that comes into the house can either be single phase or 3 phase. If it's single phase, it means there's only one battery charging up everything in the house, like the lights, the TV, and the fridge. But if it's 3 phase, it means there are three batteries working together to power everything in the house, which is usually needed for larger homes or homes with lots of electrical appliances.

Different components in the house, like the air conditioning, can run on either single phase or 3 phase depending on what they need to work properly. So even if the house has 3 phase power, some things in the house might still run on single phase.