'Leccy-starved Reg hack: 'How I survive on 1.5kW'

Re: Buffering?

Never mind in Spain, I have solar panels here in good ole' Blighty, albeit only 1.1kW peak (that being as much as they thought they could safely fit on the south facing portion of my roof), and for much of last year, could gloriously watch as my main electricity meter span backwards during the day*. And I have a server, a PC and a laptop on 24x7 (along with assorted paraphernalia).

* except anytime I switched my 3kW kettle on :).

Re: Buffering?

I use 8D rebuildable "fire engine" batteries.

As a side-note, a fuel-sipping Generac QuietSource 22 kW generator can be had for under US$8750, in your choice of LPG or town gas, and easily converted from Town to LPG in a disaster bad enough to disable the Town gas supply. That's new, with full warranty, delivered, but not installed. We installed one for a friend a few months ago.

Re: That's 100A per phase...

And after a sparky got impatient and yanked the leftover cable through the distribution box, my previous company learned that (1) you get one hell of a bang when you cross the phases on a 200amp supply and (2) it turns out that mid-70s vintage 200amp ceramic fuses are extremely hard to get hold of now in the UK - our maintenence guy was scouring second hand electrical suppliers for some time.

They do however generally power an office building fairly well, until the fuse goes.

Re: That's 100A per phase...

The other consideration is that while you can probably fit a 100A supply onto the existing grid, with a 200A supply, unless you live next door to a substation or industrial park, it's highly likely that you'd need to have the local transformer upgraded at (partially) your expense. Plus as I understood it the last time I looked, if you have more than a 100KW supply, then you have to have half-hourly metering.

When you say 300A equivalent, that's assuming 300A of phase-neutral loads which is insane, although I would love to see it in a domestic property! I would want it so that I can run a small workshop with proper equipment and perhaps a heat recovery A/C system.

Mainland UK officially 230V not 240V, and earthing is an issue

For many years now, the official mainland UK domestic single phase supply has been rated as a nominal 230V (with various tolerances, +10%/-6%, +/-6%, or +/-10%) rather than 240V. This is the same as the nominal supply for big chunks of continental Europe, whose nominal rating was increased from 220V to 230V at around the same time (perhaps with widened tolerances). Some overseas territories are still on 240V and 220V supplies.

(In practice, the measured supply at the socket is still likely to be closer to 240V in the UK, and 220V in much of the rest of Europe. Older UK equipment may specify a nominal supply of 240V. Equipment to be attached to the UK supply has to tolerate more than 250V. These ratings plates may explain why many think the official UK supply voltage is either 240V or 250V. Three phase supply is now supposedly 400V, although most three-phase warning plates still seem to refer to 415V.)

The article mentions adding a new earth. Adding a local copper earth to a modern PME supply can introduce lots of "interesting" high-current failure modes in the event that the supply cable develops a fault. It is always worth taking advice from the supply company and/or a qualified electrician before adding new earths and bonding points to a mains supply. Some earthing techniques that used to be common practice until quite recently are potentially lethal with a modern supply.

Re: RE: 100 amp 3-phase supply installed

Decent metalworking lathes are typically run from a single to three phase invertor these days. You do not need or even want the high power availability of pukka three phase, if the tool catches in the workpiece your lathe will be in bits. Inverter drive also has the benefits of continuously variable speed, and soft start.

Re: Adversity breeds ingenuity

Everything else is just an octopus of wires joined by twisting, with red, black, grey and white being used for all the lives and neutral (as in some sockets use 2 reds, some use 2 whites, etc.).

I had a house like that. Well, almost like that; the wiring colours conformed to the current standard, but whether a particular colour actually matched its use as proscribed in the standard had a probability of one in five. You could switch the stairwell light by hitting the plasterboard wall in a particular spot.

And this was right in the middle of a big city in the Netherlands.

Don't ask about Earth; there isn't one...

Err, right beneath you?

Re: Adversity breeds ingenuity

@Phil 27

Yes, load balancing will be fun, but at least at the moment, the meter doesn't measure the imbalance, like the meters in England do. Cooking is changing from Propane, because the tank here requires the ministry of miners, plus the civil engineers, plus other crap that I don't want to have to deal with (including if you reduce your consumption, you have to pay them for what you don't consume to compensate them!). The new induction hob is a bruiser, but at least it is balanced 3-phase! The other major consumers are the well pump and swimming pool pumps which are both 3-phase.

First of all though, I have to get the structure sound, and insulated; heating system installed, internal walls etc. Power is a long way off except to operate demolition hammers :)

Re: too easy

Or fuel cells... Fuel cell for mains gas or even micro chp