Why is an EV\'s backup power less than it\'s driving power?...

[Fred Bloggs]

On Friday, November 18, 2022 at 8:40:08 PM UTC-5, Flyguy wrote:

On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 5:34:31 AM UTC-8, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 8:17:58 AM UTC-5, Commander Kinsey wrote:
On Thu, 17 Nov 2022 13:03:57 -0000, Fred Bloggs <bloggs.fred...@gmail..com> wrote:

On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 4:27:46 AM UTC-5, Commander Kinsey wrote:
If an EV has an output power of say 80kW to drive the motors when driving, why is the backup power (to power your house in a power outage) only about 10kW? It\'s the same battery!

And why do people say it costs thousands of dollars to fit something to do this? Surely a 10kW invertor doesn\'t cost much, just something to make 400VDC into 240VAC. I\'d say more like 500 dollars.

You need to learn the difference between energy and power. The 80kW is really 80kWh(hours), a measure of energy stored in the battery. The 10kW is a measure of power which is the rate of energy extraction from the battery, usually specified in kW, kilo-watts, thousands of Watts. There is no logical connection between the two ratings. The engineering requirements of the battery EV application determines that.

Here is an authoritative overview:
https://theconversation.com/can-my-electric-car-power-my-house-not-yet-for-most-drivers-but-vehicle-to-home-charging-is-coming-163332

News of a work in progress to make home backup routine with no special equipment required:
https://www.atlasevhub.com/weekly_digest/here-if-you-need-evs-as-backup-batteries/

The cost for equipment to do that is top dollar because they sell so few. There\'s no logical connection between present cost and a hypothetical mass produced product.
Rewrite all that considering I know the difference between power and energy, I have a fucking physics degree. When I said 80kW I meant 80kW, not 80kWh. Do you seriously think a car motor only draws 10kW?
Your so-called degree was a woefully inadequate preparation for dealing with reality if you have to ask such a stupid question.

Notice that Fred chooses to insult RATHER than answer the question, begging the question: does Fred not know the answer? Think about it, one horsepower is 750W, so 10KW is 13.3; do you REALLY think that a car as heavy as the Tesla S can be accelerated from zero to 60mph by a THIRTEEN HORSEPOWER MOTOR? OF COURSE NOT! In fact, the Tesla S is roughly 360-470 hp depending on the variant (60, 85 or P85). Do the math.

You\'re talking about two different types of power ratings, peak and sustained. What little I can find about the Tesla EV is that later models can develop 700 HP peak for the wow effect of fast accelerations. Try to maintain it, assuming some automatic control doesn\'t kick in, and you trip the battery ( and/or even the motor maybe) overcurrent protection ( hopefully it requires manual reset so any fool who does this has to get off the road immediately). The latest Tesla model has come down a bit to a 100kWh battery capacity, the reason being a more efficient drive train with less losses, making the slightly lower capacity battery sufficient for their performance requirements. The engineers and technical management who designed these products are obviously very smart and capable. And when they decide a bidirectional charger for V2H at 10kWh is sufficient, then that means it\'s sufficient, they didn\'t just pull that number out of a hat. There are bigger issues at play here than just designing the vehicle itself. If someone doesn\'t like it, then let them build their own battery pack and inverter. Good luck with that.

 

[Martin Brown]

On 18/11/2022 19:06, Ricky wrote:

On Friday, November 18, 2022 at 6:47:12 AM UTC-5, Martin Brown
wrote:
On 18/11/2022 11:08, Ricky wrote:
On Friday, November 18, 2022 at 5:36:14 AM UTC-5, Carlos E.R.
wrote:
On 2022-11-18 02:23, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 8:00:13 PM UTC-5, Carlos
E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-18 01:20, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 4:36:12 PM UTC-5,
Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-17 21:34, Ricky wrote:
That and heat pump heating are the top of the list
for power draw. Even without those, my small family
house built in the early \'60s had 100 amp service. I
can\'t imagine all the juggling I\'d have to do to keep
under 15 amps at all times. Heck, my hot water heater
draws something like 17-18 amps, which is churning
away at the moment because I just got out of a hot
shower.

My 50l hot water tank is 1KW (actually, I put a diode
in series to lower it by half). A 300 litres unit, for
eight people, takes 3 KW. If you have such a big house,
normally you would contract for more electricity.

Yes, that is my point. Your 3.6 kW house is a bit of an
outlier.
On the contrary, 3.6 is typical, on flats (the majority of
the people here live in flats). Mine is just 2.4.

I\'m sorry, 2.4 kW is just 10 amps at 240V. Now you really are
in Green Acres territory. I never realized Spain was this
way.

You are getting it wrong. It is not Spain, it is this house.

You seem to be inconsistent. I say you are an outlier, and you
say, no, this is common. Now you say it\'s just this house.

I\'ve reached the point of not caring. You don\'t have a point to
make. You just want to talk in circles.

I have no doubt that 99% of the population has much larger feeds
than
you do. I wouldn\'t be so sure of that. My recollection is that
domestic power in several European countries is very much lower
than in the UK with a 20A main fuse being common in rural areas.
Same when I lived in Japan too.

He has said both that these low home power connections are typical,
then said \"It is not Spain, it is this house.\" Am I misunderstanding
what he is saying?

His English is so good that you are not making any allowances for the
fact that as a Spanish national English will be his second language. It
is quite easy to make somewhat ambiguous phrases in a crazy irregular
language like English even for a native speaker.

I don\'t really care one way or the other. If a country wants to
ration electrical power and play Green Acres with everyone\'s power
connection, it has no impact on me and I have no impact on it.

He is pretty much describing the reality in much of southern Europe.
They don\'t have anything like such high current mains supplies as UK or
US consumers are used to. Heating is generally oil or gas.

Having the grid capacity so that everyone is guaranteed to be
able to draw 100 A at the same time (that is the legal meaning
here, as everybody would have a contract to do just that) means
the grid needs that capacity, which is expensive - even if they
sit at 1 A the rest of the day.

No one with any intelligence designs a grid like that. Here, we
have a transformer shared by two to four houses. They don\'t even
size that to allow all the houses sharing the transformer to run
full tilt continuously. They understand the statistical nature of
energy usage... other than a commercials in a football game.
They rely on diversity of use. An assumption that is broken around
evening meal times and especially at half time of major sporting
events. UK National Grid is offering people with smart meters an
incentive not to run heavy loads at peak times during this winter.

That\'s everywhere. All electrical grids have peak power usage each
day. What he is talking about is not being able to cook when you
want because the hot water heater and the A/C are both running. His
entire home is on a 10 amp circuit!!!

Interesting question is how much current can you actually draw from a
nominal 10A supply before it trips?
We don\'t actually run the electric hot water immersion unless we have to
- oil or solid fuel fired CH normally supplies it as a side effect.

I don\'t actually know how Spain works it but I\'d guess you could draw
150% of permitted supply almost indefinitely if it is a conventional
fuse. It might be a bit more hair trigger if an MCB. Perhaps Carlos can
say how far you can push a nominal rated supply before it drops out.

Unclear if it will work my electricity supplier isn\'t taking part


Fortunately peak load per household seldom exceeds 10A at the same
time so the distribution network is never under threat.

He said they don\'t use electricity for heating and the A/C is just 1
kW for one room. So he is living like a third world country. That\'s

That is one way of looking at it. They certainly don\'t have anything
like the generating capacity of UK, France or Germany.

> how many places are in Puerto Rico.

In Japan our supply couldn\'t support three high consumption devices on
at once and they are most definitely not a third world country.

Baseload+ Aircon + Immersion heater + Washing machine
== 10kW overload trip.

Cooking was all by gas. No provision at all for an oven.

What is stupid is refusing to understand that the world
doesn\'t follow the same customs and ways as your country. There
are different ways out there, and getting angry when someone
simply tells you of the differences.

No one is angry. I\'m just pointing out that much of what you
write is inconsistent and clearly erroneous. If you don\'t
understand your grid, I don\'t expect you to be able to explain
it.
He is describing the sort of mains power that is quite common in
Spain, Italy and a few other southern European countries and Japan
too. Belgium by comparison had about the same fusing as in the UK -
in fact their phone connectors also looked like they were rated for
about 10A!

He is not being consistent in what he says.

The rest is just noise.

He isn\'t a native English speaker so cut him a little slack on what you
perceive as him being ambiguous. I can assure you that his description
of Spanish mains supply rules pretty much describes how it is on the
ground. A UK domestic kettle would almost certainly fry their wiring!

I hadn\'t realised that you could opt for different current levels. I had
only ever encountered that it was highly restricted power available.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2022-11-19 13:06, Martin Brown wrote:

On 18/11/2022 19:06, Ricky wrote:
On Friday, November 18, 2022 at 6:47:12 AM UTC-5, Martin Brown
wrote:
On 18/11/2022 11:08, Ricky wrote:
On Friday, November 18, 2022 at 5:36:14 AM UTC-5, Carlos E.R.
wrote:
On 2022-11-18 02:23, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 8:00:13 PM UTC-5, Carlos
E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-18 01:20, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 4:36:12 PM UTC-5,
Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-17 21:34, Ricky wrote:
That and heat pump heating are the top of the list
for power draw. Even without those, my small family
house built in the early \'60s had 100 amp service. I
can\'t imagine all the juggling I\'d have to do to keep
under 15 amps at all times. Heck, my hot water heater
draws something like 17-18 amps, which is churning
away at the moment because I just got out of a hot
shower.

My 50l hot water tank is 1KW (actually, I put a diode
in series to lower it by half). A 300 litres unit, for
eight people, takes 3 KW. If you have such a big house,
normally you would contract for more electricity.

Yes, that is my point. Your 3.6 kW house is a bit of an outlier.
On the contrary, 3.6 is typical, on flats (the majority of
the people here live in flats). Mine is just 2.4.

I\'m sorry, 2.4 kW is just 10 amps at 240V. Now you really are
in Green Acres territory. I never realized Spain was this
way.

You are getting it wrong. It is not Spain, it is this house.

You seem to be inconsistent. I say you are an outlier, and you
say, no, this is common. Now you say it\'s just this house.

I\'ve reached the point of not caring. You don\'t have a point to
make. You just want to talk in circles.

I have no doubt that 99% of the population has much larger feeds
than
you do. I wouldn\'t be so sure of that. My recollection is that
domestic power in several European countries is very much lower
than in the UK with a 20A main fuse being common in rural areas.
Same when I lived in Japan too.

He has said both that these low home power connections are typical,
then said \"It is not Spain, it is this house.\"  Am I misunderstanding
what he is saying?

His English is so good that you are not making any allowances for the
fact that as a Spanish national English will be his second language. It
is quite easy to make somewhat ambiguous phrases in a crazy irregular
language like English even for a native speaker.

Yes, that is so.

I don\'t really care one way or the other.  If a country wants to
ration electrical power and play Green Acres with everyone\'s power
connection, it has no impact on me and I have no impact on it.

He is pretty much describing the reality in much of southern Europe.
They don\'t have anything like such high current mains supplies as UK or
US consumers are used to. Heating is generally oil or gas.

Correct.

Obviously I don\'t have any say in how the electrical companies charge
us, and AFAIK they all work the same way. Yes, apparently they do not
want us to have high current capacity at home, unless one is rich and
doesn\'t care.

Long ago they said that they could guarantee us to draw the full
contracted power, all houses at the same time. It is in the contract: if
I contract 20A, I can draw 20A constantly. And so can everybody in the
block. If the cables or the transformer blows up, the company has hell
to pay.


So, I just wanted to say that it is possible to live fine with much less
current. We see that as luxury

Having the grid capacity so that everyone is guaranteed to be
able to draw 100 A at the same time (that is the legal meaning
here, as everybody would have a contract to do just that) means
the grid needs that capacity, which is expensive - even if they
sit at 1 A the rest of the day.

No one with any intelligence designs a grid like that. Here, we
have a transformer shared by two to four houses. They don\'t even
size that to allow all the houses sharing the transformer to run
full tilt continuously. They understand the statistical nature of
energy usage... other than a commercials in a football game.
They rely on diversity of use. An assumption that is broken around
evening meal times and especially at half time of major sporting
events. UK National Grid is offering people with smart meters an
incentive not to run heavy loads at peak times during this winter.

That\'s everywhere.  All electrical grids have peak power usage each
day.  What he is talking about is not being able to cook when you
want because the hot water heater and the A/C are both running.  His
entire home is on a 10 amp circuit!!!

Interesting question is how much current can you actually draw from a
nominal 10A supply before it trips?
We don\'t actually run the electric hot water immersion unless we have to
- oil or solid fuel fired CH normally supplies it as a side effect.

I don\'t actually know how Spain works it but I\'d guess you could draw
150% of permitted supply almost indefinitely if it is a conventional
fuse. It might be a bit more hair trigger if an MCB. Perhaps Carlos can
say how far you can push a nominal rated supply before it drops out.

I suspect that my 10A smart meter triggers at 15A, but I also suspect it
is a bug in the firmware. A fortunate bug for me. But people that have a
15A contract are not that fortunate, it triggers perhaps a minute after
using 16A or so.

I have not seen actual figures, except some other people (and
electricians) saying that the 10A limit actually triggers at 15.

Obviously I want a 15A limit, but there are hurdles in my personal case.

Unclear if it will work my electricity supplier isn\'t taking part


Fortunately peak load per household seldom exceeds 10A at the same
time so the distribution network is never under threat.

He said they don\'t use electricity for heating and the A/C is just 1
kW for one room.  So he is living like a third world country.  That\'s

That is one way of looking at it. They certainly don\'t have anything
like the generating capacity of UK, France or Germany.

I don\'t know about that, the industry has all the electricity they want
and more. I read somewhere that we have triple the generating capacity
than our actual needs.

We bitch about the price, not the capacity.

In my personal case, I only have A/C on the computer room. Doing the
entire house would mean a significantly higher contract, obviously, plus
a high current usage because this is a large old house with no
insulation. I would be ruined.

Many people only cool down the dormitories. Others do also the sitting
room. And others do the entire house. I mean a flat, which typically
means 90 m², and can be done easily with a 4.8 KW contract. A friend of
mine does with 3.6 KW contract.

This works with modern A/C which use inverters. Initially they work full
blast, but when the temperature is reached my 1KW unit goes down to
300W, so I can boil my tea just fine

how many places are in Puerto Rico.

In Japan our supply couldn\'t support three high consumption devices on
at once and they are most definitely not a third world country.

Indeed.

Things are as they are. One can rant all one wants, but still things are
as they are, so one learns to live that way.

Baseload+ Aircon + Immersion heater + Washing machine
== 10kW overload trip.

Cooking was all by gas. No provision at all for an oven.

What is stupid is refusing to understand that the world
doesn\'t follow the same customs and ways as your country. There
are different ways out there, and getting angry when someone
simply tells you of the differences.

No one is angry. I\'m just pointing out that much of what you
write is inconsistent and clearly erroneous. If you don\'t
understand your grid, I don\'t expect you to be able to explain
it.
He is describing the sort of mains power that is quite common in
Spain, Italy and a few other southern European countries and Japan
too. Belgium by comparison had about the same fusing as in the UK -
in fact their phone connectors also looked like they were rated for
about 10A!

He is not being consistent in what he says.

The rest is just noise.

He isn\'t a native English speaker so cut him a little slack on what you
perceive as him being ambiguous. I can assure you that his description
of Spanish mains supply rules pretty much describes how it is on the
ground. A UK domestic kettle would almost certainly fry their wiring!

Thanks.

Certainly.

I hadn\'t realised that you could opt for different current levels. I had
only ever encountered that it was highly restricted power available.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[Ricky]

On Saturday, November 19, 2022 at 7:06:21 AM UTC-5, Martin Brown wrote:

On 18/11/2022 19:06, Ricky wrote:
On Friday, November 18, 2022 at 6:47:12 AM UTC-5, Martin Brown
wrote:
On 18/11/2022 11:08, Ricky wrote:
On Friday, November 18, 2022 at 5:36:14 AM UTC-5, Carlos E.R.
wrote:
On 2022-11-18 02:23, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 8:00:13 PM UTC-5, Carlos
E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-18 01:20, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 4:36:12 PM UTC-5,
Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-17 21:34, Ricky wrote:
That and heat pump heating are the top of the list
for power draw. Even without those, my small family
house built in the early \'60s had 100 amp service. I
can\'t imagine all the juggling I\'d have to do to keep
under 15 amps at all times. Heck, my hot water heater
draws something like 17-18 amps, which is churning
away at the moment because I just got out of a hot
shower.

My 50l hot water tank is 1KW (actually, I put a diode
in series to lower it by half). A 300 litres unit, for
eight people, takes 3 KW. If you have such a big house,
normally you would contract for more electricity.

Yes, that is my point. Your 3.6 kW house is a bit of an
outlier.
On the contrary, 3.6 is typical, on flats (the majority of
the people here live in flats). Mine is just 2.4.

I\'m sorry, 2.4 kW is just 10 amps at 240V. Now you really are
in Green Acres territory. I never realized Spain was this
way.

You are getting it wrong. It is not Spain, it is this house.

You seem to be inconsistent. I say you are an outlier, and you
say, no, this is common. Now you say it\'s just this house.

I\'ve reached the point of not caring. You don\'t have a point to
make. You just want to talk in circles.

I have no doubt that 99% of the population has much larger feeds
than
you do. I wouldn\'t be so sure of that. My recollection is that
domestic power in several European countries is very much lower
than in the UK with a 20A main fuse being common in rural areas.
Same when I lived in Japan too.

He has said both that these low home power connections are typical,
then said \"It is not Spain, it is this house.\" Am I misunderstanding
what he is saying?
His English is so good that you are not making any allowances for the
fact that as a Spanish national English will be his second language. It
is quite easy to make somewhat ambiguous phrases in a crazy irregular
language like English even for a native speaker.

I can only respond to what he writes. I can\'t write it for him. I\'ve asked clearly several times and he continues to be ambiguous. It\'s not important. The facts are the facts. He (and some part of the population around him) live like they are in a third world country with limited resources, simply to save a couple of bucks a month. That\'s ok, he\'s free to live as he chooses. Maybe his funds are severely limited.

I don\'t really care one way or the other. If a country wants to
ration electrical power and play Green Acres with everyone\'s power
connection, it has no impact on me and I have no impact on it.
He is pretty much describing the reality in much of southern Europe.
They don\'t have anything like such high current mains supplies as UK or
US consumers are used to. Heating is generally oil or gas.

If electricity is so limited, they will never be able to adopt BEVs. I charge on a 1.44 kW connection, because my use pattern is very unusual, driving 250 miles round trip in a week, then mostly sitting for a week. The way he talks, he would never be able to charge the car while running much else.

Having the grid capacity so that everyone is guaranteed to be
able to draw 100 A at the same time (that is the legal meaning
here, as everybody would have a contract to do just that) means
the grid needs that capacity, which is expensive - even if they
sit at 1 A the rest of the day.

No one with any intelligence designs a grid like that. Here, we
have a transformer shared by two to four houses. They don\'t even
size that to allow all the houses sharing the transformer to run
full tilt continuously. They understand the statistical nature of
energy usage... other than a commercials in a football game.
They rely on diversity of use. An assumption that is broken around
evening meal times and especially at half time of major sporting
events. UK National Grid is offering people with smart meters an
incentive not to run heavy loads at peak times during this winter.

That\'s everywhere. All electrical grids have peak power usage each
day. What he is talking about is not being able to cook when you
want because the hot water heater and the A/C are both running. His
entire home is on a 10 amp circuit!!!
Interesting question is how much current can you actually draw from a
nominal 10A supply before it trips?
We don\'t actually run the electric hot water immersion unless we have to
- oil or solid fuel fired CH normally supplies it as a side effect.

Or how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

I don\'t actually know how Spain works it but I\'d guess you could draw
150% of permitted supply almost indefinitely if it is a conventional
fuse. It might be a bit more hair trigger if an MCB. Perhaps Carlos can
say how far you can push a nominal rated supply before it drops out.
Unclear if it will work my electricity supplier isn\'t taking part


Fortunately peak load per household seldom exceeds 10A at the same
time so the distribution network is never under threat.

He said they don\'t use electricity for heating and the A/C is just 1
kW for one room. So he is living like a third world country. That\'s
That is one way of looking at it. They certainly don\'t have anything
like the generating capacity of UK, France or Germany.

Even people in Puerto Rico do better.

how many places are in Puerto Rico.
In Japan our supply couldn\'t support three high consumption devices on
at once and they are most definitely not a third world country.

Baseload+ Aircon + Immersion heater + Washing machine
== 10kW overload trip.

Uh, by definition, if this is how the country is run, it *is* a third world country. A friend used to travel to the UK for work. I don\'t recall what it was, but he had to put coins in to get hot water, or room heat or something like that. Sorry, that\'s third world. I don\'t care how many nukes they have.

Cooking was all by gas. No provision at all for an oven.
What is stupid is refusing to understand that the world
doesn\'t follow the same customs and ways as your country. There
are different ways out there, and getting angry when someone
simply tells you of the differences.

No one is angry. I\'m just pointing out that much of what you
write is inconsistent and clearly erroneous. If you don\'t
understand your grid, I don\'t expect you to be able to explain
it.
He is describing the sort of mains power that is quite common in
Spain, Italy and a few other southern European countries and Japan
too. Belgium by comparison had about the same fusing as in the UK -
in fact their phone connectors also looked like they were rated for
about 10A!

He is not being consistent in what he says.

The rest is just noise.
He isn\'t a native English speaker so cut him a little slack on what you
perceive as him being ambiguous. I can assure you that his description
of Spanish mains supply rules pretty much describes how it is on the
ground. A UK domestic kettle would almost certainly fry their wiring!

He can have all the slack he wants. I just can\'t have a discussion with someone who doesn\'t know what he\'s saying, and doubles down on it when asked to clarify. Maybe he doesn\'t know he\'s writing English? Someone should tell him, perhaps?

I hadn\'t realised that you could opt for different current levels. I had
only ever encountered that it was highly restricted power available.

Sorry, that seems to be out of context. Who can opt for different current levels?

--

Rick C.

-++-- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-++-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Ricky]

On Saturday, November 19, 2022 at 1:35:58 AM UTC-5, Commander Kinsey wrote:

On Thu, 17 Nov 2022 16:00:23 -0000, Ricky <gnuarm.del...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 4:27:46 AM UTC-5, Commander Kinsey wrote:
If an EV has an output power of say 80kW to drive the motors when driving, why is the backup power (to power your house in a power outage) only about 10kW? It\'s the same battery!

And why do people say it costs thousands of dollars to fit something to do this? Surely a 10kW invertor doesn\'t cost much, just something to make 400VDC into 240VAC. I\'d say more like 500 dollars.

I don\'t know who you are talking to.

This is a newsgroup, so I\'m talking to whoever reads the post.

I would have avoided this post, but you seem to be replying to me. Maybe I\'ve made a mistake in that assumption and you are just airing out your fingers.

Many people talk about stuff they don\'t actually know much about. An EVSE which does zero energy conversion, costs around $400 for 5 kW handling capability.

You need to shop around. I can get one for half the price that does 8kW. Anyway they have electronics to communicate with the car.

One what? The point is the EVSE doesn\'t \"handle\" the power, it just connects the car to the power. An inverter is much more expensive because it has to actually convert the power. So no, $500 is not realistic for 10kW.

10 kW is around 42 amps. So I can see a 10 kW inverter being much more expensive than $500. If you think you can make and sell them at a profit, for $500, you need to go into that business!

A grand actually. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/193572450281

LOL!!! Anyone who would wire that Chinese junk to their car OR their house is an idiot! Maybe Ed Lee is up for the job?

Why do you make such posts?

--

Rick C.

-++-+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-++-+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Ricky]

On Saturday, November 19, 2022 at 2:16:18 AM UTC-5, Commander Kinsey wrote:

On Thu, 17 Nov 2022 16:03:44 -0000, Ricky <gnuarm.del...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 4:54:49 AM UTC-5, alan_m wrote:
On 17/11/2022 09:27, Commander Kinsey wrote:
If an EV has an output power of say 80kW to drive the motors when
driving, why is the backup power (to power your house in a power outage)
only about 10kW? It\'s the same battery!
The average usage of electricity per day for a UK household is less than
10kWh so a 10kWh backup battery will supply power for a day or more in
the event of a power cut.

That doesn\'t necessarily follow. If you run an electric stove, and electric water heater and a heat pump at the same time, you can easily overload a 10 kW power source and still not reach 10 kWh.

Why would you do that knowing you can only get 10kW at a time? You\'d spread the usage out.

I use the stove when I want to cook. The heat pump and water heater run when they need to run. Do I need to not eat until the heat pump and water heater both have just turned off at the same time?

Why are you mixing kW and kWh?

--

Rick C.

-+++- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+++- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Ricky]

On Saturday, November 19, 2022 at 7:48:14 AM UTC-5, Carlos E.R. wrote:

On 2022-11-19 13:06, Martin Brown wrote:
On 18/11/2022 19:06, Ricky wrote:
On Friday, November 18, 2022 at 6:47:12 AM UTC-5, Martin Brown
wrote:
On 18/11/2022 11:08, Ricky wrote:
On Friday, November 18, 2022 at 5:36:14 AM UTC-5, Carlos E.R.
wrote:
On 2022-11-18 02:23, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 8:00:13 PM UTC-5, Carlos
E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-18 01:20, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 4:36:12 PM UTC-5,
Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-17 21:34, Ricky wrote:
That and heat pump heating are the top of the list
for power draw. Even without those, my small family
house built in the early \'60s had 100 amp service. I
can\'t imagine all the juggling I\'d have to do to keep
under 15 amps at all times. Heck, my hot water heater
draws something like 17-18 amps, which is churning
away at the moment because I just got out of a hot
shower.

My 50l hot water tank is 1KW (actually, I put a diode
in series to lower it by half). A 300 litres unit, for
eight people, takes 3 KW. If you have such a big house,
normally you would contract for more electricity.

Yes, that is my point. Your 3.6 kW house is a bit of an outlier.
On the contrary, 3.6 is typical, on flats (the majority of
the people here live in flats). Mine is just 2.4.

I\'m sorry, 2.4 kW is just 10 amps at 240V. Now you really are
in Green Acres territory. I never realized Spain was this
way.

You are getting it wrong. It is not Spain, it is this house.

You seem to be inconsistent. I say you are an outlier, and you
say, no, this is common. Now you say it\'s just this house.

I\'ve reached the point of not caring. You don\'t have a point to
make. You just want to talk in circles.

I have no doubt that 99% of the population has much larger feeds
than
you do. I wouldn\'t be so sure of that. My recollection is that
domestic power in several European countries is very much lower
than in the UK with a 20A main fuse being common in rural areas.
Same when I lived in Japan too.

He has said both that these low home power connections are typical,
then said \"It is not Spain, it is this house.\" Am I misunderstanding
what he is saying?

His English is so good that you are not making any allowances for the
fact that as a Spanish national English will be his second language. It
is quite easy to make somewhat ambiguous phrases in a crazy irregular
language like English even for a native speaker.
Yes, that is so.
I don\'t really care one way or the other. If a country wants to
ration electrical power and play Green Acres with everyone\'s power
connection, it has no impact on me and I have no impact on it.

He is pretty much describing the reality in much of southern Europe.
They don\'t have anything like such high current mains supplies as UK or
US consumers are used to. Heating is generally oil or gas.
Correct.

Obviously I don\'t have any say in how the electrical companies charge
us, and AFAIK they all work the same way. Yes, apparently they do not
want us to have high current capacity at home, unless one is rich and
doesn\'t care.

You can\'t blame this on the utility. Now that you\'ve shared the numbers, this is about you pinching pennies.

Long ago they said that they could guarantee us to draw the full
contracted power, all houses at the same time. It is in the contract: if
I contract 20A, I can draw 20A constantly. And so can everybody in the
block. If the cables or the transformer blows up, the company has hell
to pay.

There\'s more than one level of insanity in that. In a neighborhood, it is virtually impossible for everyone to max out their usage. It\'s a statistical thing and the larger the group, the less likely, to the point of growing an extra arm is more likely.

So, I just wanted to say that it is possible to live fine with much less
current. We see that as luxury

That\'s why I see Spain as a third world country, based on your description. I don\'t see the numbers, but it\'s only a very few dollars a month to get 10kW service. This is just your mindset. You are paying much more than this for the actual electricity. It makes no sense to worry about a couple of euros when you are paying a lot more for the overall bill.

Having the grid capacity so that everyone is guaranteed to be
able to draw 100 A at the same time (that is the legal meaning
here, as everybody would have a contract to do just that) means
the grid needs that capacity, which is expensive - even if they
sit at 1 A the rest of the day.

No one with any intelligence designs a grid like that. Here, we
have a transformer shared by two to four houses. They don\'t even
size that to allow all the houses sharing the transformer to run
full tilt continuously. They understand the statistical nature of
energy usage... other than a commercials in a football game.
They rely on diversity of use. An assumption that is broken around
evening meal times and especially at half time of major sporting
events. UK National Grid is offering people with smart meters an
incentive not to run heavy loads at peak times during this winter.

That\'s everywhere. All electrical grids have peak power usage each
day. What he is talking about is not being able to cook when you
want because the hot water heater and the A/C are both running. His
entire home is on a 10 amp circuit!!!

Interesting question is how much current can you actually draw from a
nominal 10A supply before it trips?
We don\'t actually run the electric hot water immersion unless we have to
- oil or solid fuel fired CH normally supplies it as a side effect.

I don\'t actually know how Spain works it but I\'d guess you could draw
150% of permitted supply almost indefinitely if it is a conventional
fuse. It might be a bit more hair trigger if an MCB. Perhaps Carlos can
say how far you can push a nominal rated supply before it drops out.
I suspect that my 10A smart meter triggers at 15A, but I also suspect it
is a bug in the firmware. A fortunate bug for me. But people that have a
15A contract are not that fortunate, it triggers perhaps a minute after
using 16A or so.

I have not seen actual figures, except some other people (and
electricians) saying that the 10A limit actually triggers at 15.

Obviously I want a 15A limit, but there are hurdles in my personal case.
Unclear if it will work my electricity supplier isn\'t taking part


Fortunately peak load per household seldom exceeds 10A at the same
time so the distribution network is never under threat.

He said they don\'t use electricity for heating and the A/C is just 1
kW for one room. So he is living like a third world country. That\'s

That is one way of looking at it. They certainly don\'t have anything
like the generating capacity of UK, France or Germany.
I don\'t know about that, the industry has all the electricity they want
and more. I read somewhere that we have triple the generating capacity
than our actual needs.

We bitch about the price, not the capacity.

You\'ve provided the prices and we are talking the price of a hamburger or two.

In my personal case, I only have A/C on the computer room. Doing the
entire house would mean a significantly higher contract, obviously, plus
a high current usage because this is a large old house with no
insulation. I would be ruined.

LOL. This is just how many in Puerto Rico talk, yet they have enough money to own a house that they rent out at a great profit. Then they tell their customers to mind the electrical usage.

Many people only cool down the dormitories. Others do also the sitting
room. And others do the entire house. I mean a flat, which typically
means 90 m², and can be done easily with a 4.8 KW contract. A friend of
mine does with 3.6 KW contract.

This works with modern A/C which use inverters. Initially they work full
blast, but when the temperature is reached my 1KW unit goes down to
300W, so I can boil my tea just fine

how many places are in Puerto Rico.

In Japan our supply couldn\'t support three high consumption devices on
at once and they are most definitely not a third world country.
Indeed.

Things are as they are. One can rant all one wants, but still things are
as they are, so one learns to live that way.

LOL That\'s also the way they talk in Puerto Rico, while accepting things they could change if they set their minds to. I don\'t have much patience with people who give up easily.

--

Rick C.

-++++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-++++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2022-11-19 18:36, Ricky wrote:

On Saturday, November 19, 2022 at 7:48:14 AM UTC-5, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-19 13:06, Martin Brown wrote:
On 18/11/2022 19:06, Ricky wrote:
On Friday, November 18, 2022 at 6:47:12 AM UTC-5, Martin Brown
wrote:
On 18/11/2022 11:08, Ricky wrote:
On Friday, November 18, 2022 at 5:36:14 AM UTC-5, Carlos E.R.
wrote:
On 2022-11-18 02:23, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 8:00:13 PM UTC-5, Carlos
E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-18 01:20, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 4:36:12 PM UTC-5,
Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-17 21:34, Ricky wrote:
That and heat pump heating are the top of the list
for power draw. Even without those, my small family
house built in the early \'60s had 100 amp service. I
can\'t imagine all the juggling I\'d have to do to keep
under 15 amps at all times. Heck, my hot water heater
draws something like 17-18 amps, which is churning
away at the moment because I just got out of a hot
shower.

My 50l hot water tank is 1KW (actually, I put a diode
in series to lower it by half). A 300 litres unit, for
eight people, takes 3 KW. If you have such a big house,
normally you would contract for more electricity.

Yes, that is my point. Your 3.6 kW house is a bit of an outlier.
On the contrary, 3.6 is typical, on flats (the majority of
the people here live in flats). Mine is just 2.4.

I\'m sorry, 2.4 kW is just 10 amps at 240V. Now you really are
in Green Acres territory. I never realized Spain was this
way.

You are getting it wrong. It is not Spain, it is this house.

You seem to be inconsistent. I say you are an outlier, and you
say, no, this is common. Now you say it\'s just this house.

I\'ve reached the point of not caring. You don\'t have a point to
make. You just want to talk in circles.

I have no doubt that 99% of the population has much larger feeds
than
you do. I wouldn\'t be so sure of that. My recollection is that
domestic power in several European countries is very much lower
than in the UK with a 20A main fuse being common in rural areas.
Same when I lived in Japan too.

He has said both that these low home power connections are typical,
then said \"It is not Spain, it is this house.\" Am I misunderstanding
what he is saying?

His English is so good that you are not making any allowances for the
fact that as a Spanish national English will be his second language. It
is quite easy to make somewhat ambiguous phrases in a crazy irregular
language like English even for a native speaker.
Yes, that is so.
I don\'t really care one way or the other. If a country wants to
ration electrical power and play Green Acres with everyone\'s power
connection, it has no impact on me and I have no impact on it.

He is pretty much describing the reality in much of southern Europe.
They don\'t have anything like such high current mains supplies as UK or
US consumers are used to. Heating is generally oil or gas.
Correct.

Obviously I don\'t have any say in how the electrical companies charge
us, and AFAIK they all work the same way. Yes, apparently they do not
want us to have high current capacity at home, unless one is rich and
doesn\'t care.

You can\'t blame this on the utility. Now that you\'ve shared the numbers, this is about you pinching pennies.


Long ago they said that they could guarantee us to draw the full
contracted power, all houses at the same time. It is in the contract: if
I contract 20A, I can draw 20A constantly. And so can everybody in the
block. If the cables or the transformer blows up, the company has hell
to pay.

There\'s more than one level of insanity in that. In a neighborhood, it is virtually impossible for everyone to max out their usage. It\'s a statistical thing and the larger the group, the less likely, to the point of growing an extra arm is more likely.

Yet we managed. There is no need to to the absolute max, but close.
Everybody using the AC because it is too hot, and the transformers
exploding. They had to bring diesel generators to the block, gratis.

So, I just wanted to say that it is possible to live fine with much less
current. We see that as luxury

That\'s why I see Spain as a third world country, based on your description. I don\'t see the numbers, but it\'s only a very few dollars a month to get 10kW service. This is just your mindset. You are paying much more than this for the actual electricity. It makes no sense to worry about a couple of euros when you are paying a lot more for the overall bill.

25€/month is not a trivial amount to us, when added the taxes and the
pluses, and considering that our salaries go from 1200 to 1800€/month.

On a house with a contract of 3.6KW, paying invoices of 50 and 90€ a month.

....

I don\'t have the patience to reply to the rest.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[Ricky]

On Saturday, November 19, 2022 at 1:32:12 PM UTC-5, Carlos E.R. wrote:

On 2022-11-19 18:36, Ricky wrote:
On Saturday, November 19, 2022 at 7:48:14 AM UTC-5, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-19 13:06, Martin Brown wrote:
On 18/11/2022 19:06, Ricky wrote:
On Friday, November 18, 2022 at 6:47:12 AM UTC-5, Martin Brown
wrote:
On 18/11/2022 11:08, Ricky wrote:
On Friday, November 18, 2022 at 5:36:14 AM UTC-5, Carlos E.R.
wrote:
On 2022-11-18 02:23, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 8:00:13 PM UTC-5, Carlos
E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-18 01:20, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 4:36:12 PM UTC-5,
Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-17 21:34, Ricky wrote:
That and heat pump heating are the top of the list
for power draw. Even without those, my small family
house built in the early \'60s had 100 amp service. I
can\'t imagine all the juggling I\'d have to do to keep
under 15 amps at all times. Heck, my hot water heater
draws something like 17-18 amps, which is churning
away at the moment because I just got out of a hot
shower.

My 50l hot water tank is 1KW (actually, I put a diode
in series to lower it by half). A 300 litres unit, for
eight people, takes 3 KW. If you have such a big house,
normally you would contract for more electricity.

Yes, that is my point. Your 3.6 kW house is a bit of an outlier.
On the contrary, 3.6 is typical, on flats (the majority of
the people here live in flats). Mine is just 2.4.

I\'m sorry, 2.4 kW is just 10 amps at 240V. Now you really are
in Green Acres territory. I never realized Spain was this
way.

You are getting it wrong. It is not Spain, it is this house.

You seem to be inconsistent. I say you are an outlier, and you
say, no, this is common. Now you say it\'s just this house.

I\'ve reached the point of not caring. You don\'t have a point to
make. You just want to talk in circles.

I have no doubt that 99% of the population has much larger feeds
than
you do. I wouldn\'t be so sure of that. My recollection is that
domestic power in several European countries is very much lower
than in the UK with a 20A main fuse being common in rural areas.
Same when I lived in Japan too.

He has said both that these low home power connections are typical,
then said \"It is not Spain, it is this house.\" Am I misunderstanding
what he is saying?

His English is so good that you are not making any allowances for the
fact that as a Spanish national English will be his second language. It
is quite easy to make somewhat ambiguous phrases in a crazy irregular
language like English even for a native speaker.
Yes, that is so.
I don\'t really care one way or the other. If a country wants to
ration electrical power and play Green Acres with everyone\'s power
connection, it has no impact on me and I have no impact on it.

He is pretty much describing the reality in much of southern Europe.
They don\'t have anything like such high current mains supplies as UK or
US consumers are used to. Heating is generally oil or gas.
Correct.

Obviously I don\'t have any say in how the electrical companies charge
us, and AFAIK they all work the same way. Yes, apparently they do not
want us to have high current capacity at home, unless one is rich and
doesn\'t care.

You can\'t blame this on the utility. Now that you\'ve shared the numbers, this is about you pinching pennies.


Long ago they said that they could guarantee us to draw the full
contracted power, all houses at the same time. It is in the contract: if
I contract 20A, I can draw 20A constantly. And so can everybody in the
block. If the cables or the transformer blows up, the company has hell
to pay.

There\'s more than one level of insanity in that. In a neighborhood, it is virtually impossible for everyone to max out their usage. It\'s a statistical thing and the larger the group, the less likely, to the point of growing an extra arm is more likely.
Yet we managed. There is no need to to the absolute max, but close.
Everybody using the AC because it is too hot, and the transformers
exploding. They had to bring diesel generators to the block, gratis.


So, I just wanted to say that it is possible to live fine with much less
current. We see that as luxury

That\'s why I see Spain as a third world country, based on your description. I don\'t see the numbers, but it\'s only a very few dollars a month to get 10kW service. This is just your mindset. You are paying much more than this for the actual electricity. It makes no sense to worry about a couple of euros when you are paying a lot more for the overall bill.
25€/month is not a trivial amount to us, when added the taxes and the
pluses, and considering that our salaries go from 1200 to 1800€/month.

On a house with a contract of 3.6KW, paying invoices of 50 and 90€ a month.

I don\'t know what you are talking about. The numbers you gave previously would get you 5.8 kW for $14 a month, a huge difference from being able to plug in two large items at once. If $14 a month is a lot to you, then we are living in very different worlds. I just bought a uncooked pizza at the supermarket, with a broccoli crown and a bag of small candy bars for $14. That\'s dinner and dessert. Are you actually so poor that you would miss this little bit? Oh, the $14 is before subtracting what you are paying now. I have no idea what you are talking about with 50 and 90 euro a month. That\'s usage, not the fee for service.

> I don\'t have the patience to reply to the rest.

Indeed.

--

Rick C.

+---- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+---- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Martin Brown]

On 19/11/2022 17:36, Ricky wrote:

On Saturday, November 19, 2022 at 7:48:14 AM UTC-5, Carlos E.R.
wrote:
On 2022-11-19 13:06, Martin Brown wrote:
On 18/11/2022 19:06, Ricky wrote:
On Friday, November 18, 2022 at 6:47:12 AM UTC-5, Martin Brown
wrote:
On 18/11/2022 11:08, Ricky wrote:
On Friday, November 18, 2022 at 5:36:14 AM UTC-5, Carlos
E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-18 02:23, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 8:00:13 PM UTC-5,
Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-18 01:20, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 4:36:12 PM
UTC-5, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-17 21:34, Ricky wrote:
That and heat pump heating are the top of the
list for power draw. Even without those, my
small family house built in the early \'60s had
100 amp service. I can\'t imagine all the
juggling I\'d have to do to keep under 15 amps
at all times. Heck, my hot water heater draws
something like 17-18 amps, which is churning
away at the moment because I just got out of a
hot shower.

My 50l hot water tank is 1KW (actually, I put a
diode in series to lower it by half). A 300
litres unit, for eight people, takes 3 KW. If you
have such a big house, normally you would
contract for more electricity.

Yes, that is my point. Your 3.6 kW house is a bit
of an outlier.
On the contrary, 3.6 is typical, on flats (the
majority of the people here live in flats). Mine is
just 2.4.

I\'m sorry, 2.4 kW is just 10 amps at 240V. Now you
really are in Green Acres territory. I never realized
Spain was this way.

You are getting it wrong. It is not Spain, it is this
house.

You seem to be inconsistent. I say you are an outlier, and
you say, no, this is common. Now you say it\'s just this
house.

I\'ve reached the point of not caring. You don\'t have a
point to make. You just want to talk in circles.

I have no doubt that 99% of the population has much larger
feeds than
you do. I wouldn\'t be so sure of that. My recollection is
that domestic power in several European countries is very
much lower than in the UK with a 20A main fuse being common
in rural areas. Same when I lived in Japan too.

He has said both that these low home power connections are
typical, then said \"It is not Spain, it is this house.\" Am I
misunderstanding what he is saying?

His English is so good that you are not making any allowances for
the fact that as a Spanish national English will be his second
language. It is quite easy to make somewhat ambiguous phrases in
a crazy irregular language like English even for a native
speaker.
Yes, that is so.
I don\'t really care one way or the other. If a country wants
to ration electrical power and play Green Acres with everyone\'s
power connection, it has no impact on me and I have no impact
on it.

He is pretty much describing the reality in much of southern
Europe. They don\'t have anything like such high current mains
supplies as UK or US consumers are used to. Heating is generally
oil or gas.
Correct.

Obviously I don\'t have any say in how the electrical companies
charge us, and AFAIK they all work the same way. Yes, apparently
they do not want us to have high current capacity at home, unless
one is rich and doesn\'t care.

You can\'t blame this on the utility. Now that you\'ve shared the
numbers, this is about you pinching pennies.

No. It is a different supply model to the one that you and I are used to
in the UK and USA. Their supply is effectively guaranteed to provide
their contracted maximum even when everyone else wants it at the same
time. That guaranteed maximum comes with a price tag that depends on how
big it is.

UK has a flat standing charge for being connected presently about £0.7
per day. It has increased a lot recently because many energy \"suppliers\"
who were in reality clueless box shifter middlemen went bust and the
government had to bail them out. The increase in everyone\'s standing
charge has to pay for that mammoth deregulation cock up!

Long ago they said that they could guarantee us to draw the full
contracted power, all houses at the same time. It is in the
contract: if I contract 20A, I can draw 20A constantly. And so can
everybody in the block. If the cables or the transformer blows up,
the company has hell to pay.

There\'s more than one level of insanity in that. In a neighborhood,
it is virtually impossible for everyone to max out their usage. It\'s
a statistical thing and the larger the group, the less likely, to the
point of growing an extra arm is more likely.

In the circumstances of a Mediterranean country in mid afternoon on a
hot summer\'s day it is practically guaranteed to happen as everyone will
be running their aircon flat out. Likewise at meal times and half time
in major sporting events you get synchronous spikes across many users.

So, I just wanted to say that it is possible to live fine with much
less current. We see that as luxury

That\'s why I see Spain as a third world country, based on your
description. I don\'t see the numbers, but it\'s only a very few
dollars a month to get 10kW service. This is just your mindset. You
are paying much more than this for the actual electricity. It makes
no sense to worry about a couple of euros when you are paying a lot
more for the overall bill.

In the UK it is a shade under $1/day before you use any electricity at
all just to have the connection. This has increased a lot recently due
to many bankruptcies of dodgy incompetent \"electricity suppliers\".
Insane deregulation measures allowed a lot of companies to set up as
suppliers who didn\'t have the faintest clue what they were doing.

The UK model has another interesting little quirk - the poorer you are
the more you pay for your electricity! IOW the discount for paying by
monthly direct debit from a bank account is ~£130 which the poorest do
not get if they are on a PAYG deal. They also get cut off supply
immediately that their money runs out.

That is one way of looking at it. They certainly don\'t have
anything like the generating capacity of UK, France or Germany.
I don\'t know about that, the industry has all the electricity they
want and more. I read somewhere that we have triple the generating
capacity than our actual needs.

We bitch about the price, not the capacity.

You\'ve provided the prices and we are talking the price of a
hamburger or two.

It is still a choice though that isn\'t present in our supply model and
is quite common in lower latitude bordering on semi tropical countries.

Having a guaranteed smaller maximum supply can be an advantage if you
are likely to all want to use it at the same time and total supply is in
effect rationed by price. The smart meter dynamic pricing models will be
heading in that direction in the UK and USA before too long.

IOW electricity will cost you more at peak times. I suspect the UK will
have rolling powercuts this winter if it turns really cold in Europe.
Not enough gas storage in the UK to handle a fortnight of bad weather!

In my personal case, I only have A/C on the computer room. Doing
the entire house would mean a significantly higher contract,
obviously, plus a high current usage because this is a large old
house with no insulation. I would be ruined.

LOL. This is just how many in Puerto Rico talk, yet they have enough
money to own a house that they rent out at a great profit. Then they
tell their customers to mind the electrical usage.

That is how you end up with PAYG meters in some UK rental properties.

Things are as they are. One can rant all one wants, but still
things are as they are, so one learns to live that way.

LOL That\'s also the way they talk in Puerto Rico, while accepting
things they could change if they set their minds to. I don\'t have
much patience with people who give up easily.

If it suits them then why should you care?

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Martin Brown]

On 19/11/2022 17:17, Ricky wrote:

On Saturday, November 19, 2022 at 7:06:21 AM UTC-5, Martin Brown
wrote:
On 18/11/2022 19:06, Ricky wrote:

I don\'t really care one way or the other. If a country wants to
ration electrical power and play Green Acres with everyone\'s
power connection, it has no impact on me and I have no impact on
it.
He is pretty much describing the reality in much of southern
Europe. They don\'t have anything like such high current mains
supplies as UK or US consumers are used to. Heating is generally
oil or gas.

If electricity is so limited, they will never be able to adopt BEVs.
I charge on a 1.44 kW connection, because my use pattern is very
unusual, driving 250 miles round trip in a week, then mostly sitting
for a week. The way he talks, he would never be able to charge the
car while running much else.

Given the low capacity supply he has that would be the case. In the UK
the same problem for charging electric vehicles applies in a different
way in that so many cars in cities are parked on the street some
distance from the owners house. There is no guarantee here that you can
park in front of your own house (like there is in Belgium for example).

Typically getting an electric car here involves fitting a 7kW fixed
charger in the garage or outside the house and upgrading the mains
supply fuse from 60A to 100A at the same time.

I hadn\'t realised that you could opt for different current levels.
I had only ever encountered that it was highly restricted power
available.

Sorry, that seems to be out of context. Who can opt for different
current levels?

Spanish customers have that option to select their maximum supply
current to be at a lower limit than the physical cables can carry.

I hadn\'t appreciated that until these exchanges - I had always thought
it was fixed by the hardware constraints in their distribution system
and not by the supply contract with the home owner. I suspect many
rental properties are on the lowest possible supply contract too.

UK you either have supply or not and the main isolation fuse is more or
less determined by the date the building was finished and wired up. It
can be changed (or replaced if blown) on payment of a fee to your
supplier but that doesn\'t alter the fixed daily charges you pay.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Martin Brown]

On 18/11/2022 22:02, Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote:

fredag den 18. november 2022 kl. 20.38.53 UTC+1 skrev Ricky:
On Friday, November 18, 2022 at 1:10:54 PM UTC-5, lang...@fonz.dk wrote:
fredag den 18. november 2022 kl. 11.37.56 UTC+1 skrev Martin Brown:
On 17/11/2022 19:00, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 11:59:31 AM UTC-5, Joe Gwinn
wrote:
On Thu, 17 Nov 2022 13:39:36 +0000, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

10kW is a fairly reasonable figure for powering a home. Over
engineering it to do 20kW or 40kW continuous would not be good
value for money.
In the UK, perhaps. In the US, lots of homes have gone to 100-amp
220 Vac split phase, or 22 KW. Some have twice that.

No home in the US have gone to 100-amp, 220VAC split phase. The
nominal voltage in the US is 240V. I expect very few homes in the US
have been built with 100 amp service in the last 50 years. In the
70s, there was a big push to use more electric appliances, including
electric radiant heat! You aren\'t getting that with 100 amp
service.

Since US domestic power is nominal 110v I\'d have thought that 100A per
live feed was about right (bordering on the low side). OTOH high power
devices like aircon are run phase to phase on 220v.

My feed is 60A @ 230v ~ 14kW modern build here would be 100A ~ 23kW

I live in an apartment, I don\'t know what the feed is but in my panel is 4*10A fuses
I assume you are not in the US? I\'ve never heard of 10A circuits. Even a hair dryer would blow that breaker.

UK lighting circuits can be 10A, 16A or increasingly now that high
efficiency LED lights are so common 6A MCBs. The change to LED lighting
has cut power consumption for lighting by a factor of ~8x.

> Denmark, 230V

40A (1950\'s build) or more likely 60A used to be the old standard mains
isolation fuse in the UK. That has since gone up to 100A for new build
and the incoming cables in most places are easily up to 100A or more.

Pre 1950\'s build you can get some very oddball stuff buried underground
that is a bit like armoured mains coax where the steel wire outer sheath
is neutral or earth and live supply conductor is the centre core.

Very annoying if you want to use a clip on meter!

Clearly you have separate heat and A/C, also hot water and range/oven. I assume you have gas.

no AC, no gas, heating and hot water is hydronic district heating

Is your heating by hot water from a neighbourhood combined heat and
power plant or bore hole?

Neighbourhood CHP schemes in the UK have been disastrous for their
customers during the recent energy price hikes. They are treated as
business customers and the price rises they get are not capped at all.
(domestic consumers electricity price cap is presently 33p / kWh)

10A fuses seem a tadge on the low side for running an electric cooker
and a bit marginal for providing a ring main like in the UK.

My cooker circuit is fused at 32A on its own. In practice even doing
Christmas dinner with everything in use it seldom pulls more than half
that on average but it could do if you switched every ring and oven on
at once from cold.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2022-11-19 22:50, Ricky wrote:

On Saturday, November 19, 2022 at 1:32:12 PM UTC-5, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-19 18:36, Ricky wrote:
On Saturday, November 19, 2022 at 7:48:14 AM UTC-5, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-19 13:06, Martin Brown wrote:
On 18/11/2022 19:06, Ricky wrote:
On Friday, November 18, 2022 at 6:47:12 AM UTC-5, Martin Brown
wrote:
On 18/11/2022 11:08, Ricky wrote:
On Friday, November 18, 2022 at 5:36:14 AM UTC-5, Carlos E.R.
wrote:
On 2022-11-18 02:23, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 8:00:13 PM UTC-5, Carlos
E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-18 01:20, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 4:36:12 PM UTC-5,
Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-17 21:34, Ricky wrote:
That and heat pump heating are the top of the list
for power draw. Even without those, my small family
house built in the early \'60s had 100 amp service. I
can\'t imagine all the juggling I\'d have to do to keep
under 15 amps at all times. Heck, my hot water heater
draws something like 17-18 amps, which is churning
away at the moment because I just got out of a hot
shower.

My 50l hot water tank is 1KW (actually, I put a diode
in series to lower it by half). A 300 litres unit, for
eight people, takes 3 KW. If you have such a big house,
normally you would contract for more electricity.

Yes, that is my point. Your 3.6 kW house is a bit of an outlier.
On the contrary, 3.6 is typical, on flats (the majority of
the people here live in flats). Mine is just 2.4.

I\'m sorry, 2.4 kW is just 10 amps at 240V. Now you really are
in Green Acres territory. I never realized Spain was this
way.

You are getting it wrong. It is not Spain, it is this house.

You seem to be inconsistent. I say you are an outlier, and you
say, no, this is common. Now you say it\'s just this house.

I\'ve reached the point of not caring. You don\'t have a point to
make. You just want to talk in circles.

I have no doubt that 99% of the population has much larger feeds
than
you do. I wouldn\'t be so sure of that. My recollection is that
domestic power in several European countries is very much lower
than in the UK with a 20A main fuse being common in rural areas.
Same when I lived in Japan too.

He has said both that these low home power connections are typical,
then said \"It is not Spain, it is this house.\" Am I misunderstanding
what he is saying?

His English is so good that you are not making any allowances for the
fact that as a Spanish national English will be his second language. It
is quite easy to make somewhat ambiguous phrases in a crazy irregular
language like English even for a native speaker.
Yes, that is so.
I don\'t really care one way or the other. If a country wants to
ration electrical power and play Green Acres with everyone\'s power
connection, it has no impact on me and I have no impact on it.

He is pretty much describing the reality in much of southern Europe.
They don\'t have anything like such high current mains supplies as UK or
US consumers are used to. Heating is generally oil or gas.
Correct.

Obviously I don\'t have any say in how the electrical companies charge
us, and AFAIK they all work the same way. Yes, apparently they do not
want us to have high current capacity at home, unless one is rich and
doesn\'t care.

You can\'t blame this on the utility. Now that you\'ve shared the numbers, this is about you pinching pennies.


Long ago they said that they could guarantee us to draw the full
contracted power, all houses at the same time. It is in the contract: if
I contract 20A, I can draw 20A constantly. And so can everybody in the
block. If the cables or the transformer blows up, the company has hell
to pay.

There\'s more than one level of insanity in that. In a neighborhood, it is virtually impossible for everyone to max out their usage. It\'s a statistical thing and the larger the group, the less likely, to the point of growing an extra arm is more likely.
Yet we managed. There is no need to to the absolute max, but close.
Everybody using the AC because it is too hot, and the transformers
exploding. They had to bring diesel generators to the block, gratis.


So, I just wanted to say that it is possible to live fine with much less
current. We see that as luxury

That\'s why I see Spain as a third world country, based on your description. I don\'t see the numbers, but it\'s only a very few dollars a month to get 10kW service. This is just your mindset. You are paying much more than this for the actual electricity. It makes no sense to worry about a couple of euros when you are paying a lot more for the overall bill.
25€/month is not a trivial amount to us, when added the taxes and the
pluses, and considering that our salaries go from 1200 to 1800€/month.

On a house with a contract of 3.6KW, paying invoices of 50 and 90€ a month.

I don\'t know what you are talking about. The numbers you gave previously would get you 5.8 kW for $14 a month, a huge difference from being able to plug in two large items at once.

There several other concepts. The actual final invoice for a flat
limited to 3.6KW can easily be above 50. I simply looked up invoices
from somebody else and 50, even 90, is quite normal.

A burger here is less than 3 euros, by the way.

If $14 a month is a lot to you, then we are living in very different worlds. I just bought a uncooked pizza at the supermarket, with a broccoli crown and a bag of small candy bars for $14. That\'s dinner and dessert. Are you actually so poor that you would miss this little bit? Oh, the $14 is before subtracting what you are paying now. I have no idea what you are talking about with 50 and 90 euro a month. That\'s usage, not the fee for service.

I don\'t have the patience to reply to the rest.

Indeed.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2022-11-20 11:28, Martin Brown wrote:

On 19/11/2022 17:36, Ricky wrote:
On Saturday, November 19, 2022 at 7:48:14 AM UTC-5, Carlos E.R.
wrote:
On 2022-11-19 13:06, Martin Brown wrote:
On 18/11/2022 19:06, Ricky wrote:
On Friday, November 18, 2022 at 6:47:12 AM UTC-5, Martin Brown wrote:
On 18/11/2022 11:08, Ricky wrote:
On Friday, November 18, 2022 at 5:36:14 AM UTC-5, Carlos
E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-18 02:23, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 8:00:13 PM UTC-5,
Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-18 01:20, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 4:36:12 PM
UTC-5, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-17 21:34, Ricky wrote:
That and heat pump heating are the top of the
list for power draw. Even without those, my
small family house built in the early \'60s had
100 amp service. I can\'t imagine all the
juggling I\'d have to do to keep under 15 amps
at all times. Heck, my hot water heater draws
something like 17-18 amps, which is churning away at the
moment because I just got out of a
hot shower.

My 50l hot water tank is 1KW (actually, I put a
diode in series to lower it by half). A 300
litres unit, for eight people, takes 3 KW. If you
have such a big house, normally you would
contract for more electricity.

Yes, that is my point. Your 3.6 kW house is a bit
of an outlier.
On the contrary, 3.6 is typical, on flats (the
majority of the people here live in flats). Mine is
just 2.4.

I\'m sorry, 2.4 kW is just 10 amps at 240V. Now you
really are in Green Acres territory. I never realized
Spain was this way.

You are getting it wrong. It is not Spain, it is this
house.

You seem to be inconsistent. I say you are an outlier, and
you say, no, this is common. Now you say it\'s just this
house.

I\'ve reached the point of not caring. You don\'t have a
point to make. You just want to talk in circles.

I have no doubt that 99% of the population has much larger
feeds than
you do. I wouldn\'t be so sure of that. My recollection is
that domestic power in several European countries is very
much lower than in the UK with a 20A main fuse being common
in rural areas. Same when I lived in Japan too.

He has said both that these low home power connections are
typical, then said \"It is not Spain, it is this house.\"  Am I
misunderstanding what he is saying?

His English is so good that you are not making any allowances for
the fact that as a Spanish national English will be his second
language. It is quite easy to make somewhat ambiguous phrases in
a crazy irregular language like English even for a native
speaker.
Yes, that is so.
I don\'t really care one way or the other.  If a country wants
to ration electrical power and play Green Acres with everyone\'s
power connection, it has no impact on me and I have no impact
on it.

He is pretty much describing the reality in much of southern
Europe. They don\'t have anything like such high current mains
supplies as UK or US consumers are used to. Heating is generally
oil or gas.
Correct.

Obviously I don\'t have any say in how the electrical companies
charge us, and AFAIK they all work the same way. Yes, apparently
they do not want us to have high current capacity at home, unless
one is rich and doesn\'t care.

You can\'t blame this on the utility.  Now that you\'ve shared the
numbers, this is about you pinching pennies.

No. It is a different supply model to the one that you and I are used to
in the UK and USA. Their supply is effectively guaranteed to provide
their contracted maximum even when everyone else wants it at the same
time. That guaranteed maximum comes with a price tag that depends on how
big it is.

Correct.

UK has a flat standing charge for being connected presently about £0.7
per day. It has increased a lot recently because many energy \"suppliers\"
who were in reality clueless box shifter middlemen went bust and the
government had to bail them out. The increase in everyone\'s standing
charge has to pay for that mammoth deregulation cock up!

Long ago they said that they could guarantee us to draw the full
contracted power, all houses at the same time. It is in the
contract: if I contract 20A, I can draw 20A constantly. And so can
everybody in the block. If the cables or the transformer blows up,
the company has hell to pay.

There\'s more than one level of insanity in that.  In a neighborhood,
it is virtually impossible for everyone to max out their usage.  It\'s
a statistical thing and the larger the group, the less likely, to the
point of growing an extra arm is more likely.

In the circumstances of a Mediterranean country in mid afternoon on a
hot summer\'s day it is practically guaranteed to happen as everyone will
be running their aircon flat out. Likewise at meal times and half time
in major sporting events you get synchronous spikes across many users.

True.

There are other simultaneous spikes, like doing the laundry on Saturday
mornings :-D

So, I just wanted to say that it is possible to live fine with much
less current. We see that as luxury

That\'s why I see Spain as a third world country, based on your
description.  I don\'t see the numbers, but it\'s only a very few
dollars a month to get 10kW service.  This is just your mindset.  You
are paying much more than this for the actual electricity.  It makes
no sense to worry about a couple of euros when you are paying a lot
more for the overall bill.

In the UK it is a shade under $1/day before you use any electricity at
all just to have the connection. This has increased a lot recently due
to many bankruptcies of dodgy incompetent \"electricity suppliers\".
Insane deregulation measures allowed a lot of companies to set up as
suppliers who didn\'t have the faintest clue what they were doing.

Here they crashed when the prices started skyrocketing. They had offered
a fixed price for a year.

1$ a day... that\'s 30 a month. It is quite a packet. More than here. But
not tied to a limit?


Here, a house limited to 3.45KW pays (I am looking at an actual invoice
of people I know)

9.71€ for the \"fuse\"
1.10 financing a social bonus
11 usage (this couple uses surprisingly little electricity)
0.11 special tax (for all the above including usage)

0.80 rent of the meter
7 insurance
2 vat (part of it reduced to 5% instead of 23%)

28 total.

Cooking and heating is on gas. This same house paid 90 years ago, when
they used electrical heating on two rooms.

The UK model has another interesting little quirk - the poorer you are
the more you pay for your electricity! IOW the discount for paying by
monthly direct debit from a bank account is ~£130 which the poorest do
not get if they are on a PAYG deal. They also get cut off supply
immediately that their money runs out.

I heard.

That is one way of looking at it. They certainly don\'t have
anything like the generating capacity of UK, France or Germany.
I don\'t know about that, the industry has all the electricity they
want and more. I read somewhere that we have triple the generating
capacity than our actual needs.

We bitch about the price, not the capacity.

You\'ve provided the prices and we are talking the price of a
hamburger or two.

It is still a choice though that isn\'t present in our supply model and
is quite common in lower latitude bordering on semi tropical countries.

Having a guaranteed smaller maximum supply can be an advantage if you
are likely to all want to use it at the same time and total supply is in
effect rationed by price. The smart meter dynamic pricing models will be
heading in that direction in the UK and USA before too long.

IOW electricity will cost you more at peak times. I suspect the UK will
have rolling powercuts this winter if it turns really cold in Europe.
Not enough gas storage in the UK to handle a fortnight of bad weather!

It is quite possible :-(

In my personal case, I only have A/C on the computer room. Doing
the entire house would mean a significantly higher contract,
obviously, plus a high current usage because this is a large old
house with no insulation. I would be ruined.

LOL.  This is just how many in Puerto Rico talk, yet they have enough
money to own a house that they rent out at a great profit.  Then they
tell their customers to mind the electrical usage.

That is how you end up with PAYG meters in some UK rental properties.

Things are as they are. One can rant all one wants, but still
things are as they are, so one learns to live that way.

LOL  That\'s also the way they talk in Puerto Rico, while accepting
things they could change if they set their minds to.  I don\'t have
much patience with people who give up easily.

If it suits them then why should you care?

Indeed.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[Lamont Cranston]

On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 10:12:48 AM UTC-6, Ricky wrote:
the typical 15-20 kW a car uses. Even on steep upgrades or when passing it\'s seldom my car uses over 150 kW.

I built an electric gokart the used 14kW on initial acceleration! About 300amps at 48V.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/u4nfzy1c7dqd77w/Gokart%202.jpg?dl=0
Kids like doing donuts.
Mikek

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2022-11-20 11:57, Martin Brown wrote:

On 19/11/2022 17:17, Ricky wrote:
On Saturday, November 19, 2022 at 7:06:21 AM UTC-5, Martin Brown
wrote:
On 18/11/2022 19:06, Ricky wrote:

I don\'t really care one way or the other. If a country wants to
ration electrical power and play Green Acres with everyone\'s
power connection, it has no impact on me and I have no impact on
it.
He is pretty much describing the reality in much of southern
Europe. They don\'t have anything like such high current mains
supplies as UK or US consumers are used to. Heating is generally
oil or gas.

If electricity is so limited, they will never be able to adopt BEVs.
I charge on a 1.44 kW connection, because my use pattern is very
unusual, driving 250 miles round trip in a week, then mostly sitting
for a week.  The way he talks, he would never be able to charge the
car while running much else.

Given the low capacity supply he has that would be the case. In the UK
the same problem for charging electric vehicles applies in a different
way in that so many cars in cities are parked on the street some
distance from the owners house. There is no guarantee here that you can
park in front of your own house (like there is in Belgium for example).

Typically getting an electric car here involves fitting a 7kW fixed
charger in the garage or outside the house and upgrading the mains
supply fuse from 60A to 100A at the same time.

Yes, I have no idea how they are pricing it here.

It is an interesting situation in a building of flats here. There is a
parking space underground for all the flats. So, do you bring a thick
cable from the 7th floor down the -2 floor where your car is parked? Or
do you get a new auxiliary contract in the basement for the car?

I have seen chargers in the basements, but I didn\'t ask how it goes.


If they put chargers on the streets, they may be well tempted to make a
large profit, killing the advantage of an EV.

I hadn\'t realised that you could opt for different current levels.
I had only ever encountered that it was highly restricted power
available.

Sorry, that seems to be out of context.  Who can opt for different
current levels?

Spanish customers have that option to select their maximum supply
current to be at a lower limit than the physical cables can carry.

I hadn\'t appreciated that until these exchanges - I had always thought
it was fixed by the hardware constraints in their distribution system
and not by the supply contract with the home owner. I suspect many
rental properties are on the lowest possible supply contract too.

And now we can have a different lower limit on peak hours if we choose.
Or higher on valley hours.

UK you either have supply or not and the main isolation fuse is more or
less determined by the date the building was finished and wired up. It
can be changed (or replaced if blown) on payment of a fee to your
supplier but that doesn\'t alter the fixed daily charges you pay.

Yes, I also have a large fuse on the wall outside my house. Expensive to
replace. The limit tied to the contract is nowdays done on the meter,
and the company can change it remotely. Years before, it was an
electromechanical limiter installed with a lead seal (to impede
tampering). But it was tampered with, so they switched us to smart
meters fast.


It is just a different system. Each country has their own, and I think
it is interesting to chat and learn about them. Not to despise other
people because one thinks they are less fortunate.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[Martin Brown]

On 18/11/2022 23:50, Joe Gwinn wrote:

On Fri, 18 Nov 2022 10:37:40 +0000, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 17/11/2022 19:00, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 11:59:31 AM UTC-5, Joe Gwinn
wrote:
On Thu, 17 Nov 2022 13:39:36 +0000, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

10kW is a fairly reasonable figure for powering a home. Over
engineering it to do 20kW or 40kW continuous would not be good
value for money.

In the UK, perhaps. In the US, lots of homes have gone to 100-amp
220 Vac split phase, or 22 KW. Some have twice that.

No home in the US have gone to 100-amp, 220VAC split phase. The
nominal voltage in the US is 240V. I expect very few homes in the US
have been built with 100 amp service in the last 50 years. In the
70s, there was a big push to use more electric appliances, including
electric radiant heat! You aren\'t getting that with 100 amp
service.

Well, actually 100-amp is very common, and 200-amp for larger homes.
By split-phase, we do not mean polyphase of any kind. We mean that we
take power from a single phase and pass it through a transformer with
a center-tapped transformer secondary, with the center connection
(power neutral, white wire in the US) being held very close to earth
ground (green wire in the US). The two ends of the center-tapped
winding may be both black, or sometimes red and black. In three-phase
systems, the wires usually have different colors for each of the
phases. There is a rule that I don\'t remember.

I\'m still slightly confused by the US rural HT distribution scheme.
Do you actually have a single live phase and neutral on the poles?

UK is pretty much all three phases hot with either full three phase 240v
for industrial users and in larger towns and cities or a pair of phases
used with a centre tap neutral to make a balanced 240-0-240 pair.

Since US domestic power is nominal 110v I\'d have thought that 100A per
live feed was about right (bordering on the low side). OTOH high power
devices like aircon are run phase to phase on 220v.

Yes, exactly. But do not call them phases - this is single-phase, so
they are not phases.

They are still phases but V, -V rather than cube roots of -V.

My feed is 60A @ 230v ~ 14kW modern build here would be 100A ~ 23kW

About the same. But if I wanted to run a US tea water heater, I\'d
have to run a 220-volt line to the kitchen, but with maybe 10-amp
fuses. Which I have seen. There is a US plug for that, which does
not resemble UK plugs.

I have never seen anywhere that resembles UK plugs. Ours have fuses in
them (which means at a full 13+A they can run decidedly warm).

Base load 24/7 is 70W typical daytime load ~300W peak maybe 6kW.

I don\'t offhand know our average. I\'ll hunt up a bill or two.

Smart meters or a clip on to one of the supply tails will give you are
very good idea. That 70W supports a lot of gadgets running 24/7.

In most of Europe it is likely to be 230v nominal 115v-0-115v balanced
or it could be full three phase supply to industrial premises.

Ahh. What you call \"balanced\" sounds like the US split phase.

Two English speaking countries separated by a common language.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2022-11-20 14:37, Martin Brown wrote:

On 18/11/2022 23:50, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Fri, 18 Nov 2022 10:37:40 +0000, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 17/11/2022 19:00, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 11:59:31 AM UTC-5, Joe Gwinn
wrote:
On Thu, 17 Nov 2022 13:39:36 +0000, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

10kW is a fairly reasonable figure for powering a home. Over
engineering it to do 20kW or 40kW continuous would not be good
value for money.

In the UK, perhaps. In the US, lots of homes have gone to 100-amp
220 Vac split phase, or 22 KW. Some have twice that.

No home in the US have gone to 100-amp, 220VAC split phase.  The
nominal voltage in the US is 240V.  I expect very few homes in the US
have been built with 100 amp service in the last 50 years.  In the
70s, there was a big push to use more electric appliances, including
electric radiant heat!   You aren\'t getting that with 100 amp
service.

Well, actually 100-amp is very common, and 200-amp for larger homes.
By split-phase, we do not mean polyphase of any kind.  We mean that we
take power from a single phase and pass it through a transformer with
a center-tapped transformer secondary, with the center connection
(power neutral, white wire in the US) being held very close to earth
ground (green wire in the US).  The two ends of the center-tapped
winding may be both black, or sometimes red and black.  In three-phase
systems, the wires usually have different colors for each of the
phases.  There is a rule that I don\'t remember.

I\'m still slightly confused by the US rural HT distribution scheme.
Do you actually have a single live phase and neutral on the poles?

HT, 3 phases

---- transformer \\---- 120 v
(takes one /
---- phase on \\---- center, grounded
primary) /
---- \\---- 120 v


I\'m not fully sure of the primary, but the secondary should be correct.
It is single phase, with a transformer with a center tap, grounded,
which acts as neutral. The two 120 lives are at 180° one from the other.


--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[Lasse Langwadt Christensen]

søndag den 20. november 2022 kl. 12.00.06 UTC+1 skrev Martin Brown:

On 18/11/2022 22:02, Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote:
fredag den 18. november 2022 kl. 20.38.53 UTC+1 skrev Ricky:
On Friday, November 18, 2022 at 1:10:54 PM UTC-5, lang...@fonz.dk wrote:
fredag den 18. november 2022 kl. 11.37.56 UTC+1 skrev Martin Brown:
On 17/11/2022 19:00, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 11:59:31 AM UTC-5, Joe Gwinn
wrote:
On Thu, 17 Nov 2022 13:39:36 +0000, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

10kW is a fairly reasonable figure for powering a home. Over
engineering it to do 20kW or 40kW continuous would not be good
value for money.
In the UK, perhaps. In the US, lots of homes have gone to 100-amp
220 Vac split phase, or 22 KW. Some have twice that.

No home in the US have gone to 100-amp, 220VAC split phase. The
nominal voltage in the US is 240V. I expect very few homes in the US
have been built with 100 amp service in the last 50 years. In the
70s, there was a big push to use more electric appliances, including
electric radiant heat! You aren\'t getting that with 100 amp
service.

Since US domestic power is nominal 110v I\'d have thought that 100A per
live feed was about right (bordering on the low side). OTOH high power
devices like aircon are run phase to phase on 220v.

My feed is 60A @ 230v ~ 14kW modern build here would be 100A ~ 23kW
I live in an apartment, I don\'t know what the feed is but in my panel is 4*10A fuses
I assume you are not in the US? I\'ve never heard of 10A circuits. Even a hair dryer would blow that breaker.
UK lighting circuits can be 10A, 16A or increasingly now that high
efficiency LED lights are so common 6A MCBs. The change to LED lighting
has cut power consumption for lighting by a factor of ~8x.

Denmark, 230V

40A (1950\'s build) or more likely 60A used to be the old standard mains
isolation fuse in the UK. That has since gone up to 100A for new build
and the incoming cables in most places are easily up to 100A or more.

Pre 1950\'s build you can get some very oddball stuff buried underground
that is a bit like armoured mains coax where the steel wire outer sheath
is neutral or earth and live supply conductor is the centre core.

Very annoying if you want to use a clip on meter!
Clearly you have separate heat and A/C, also hot water and range/oven. I assume you have gas.

no AC, no gas, heating and hot water is hydronic district heating
Is your heating by hot water from a neighbourhood combined heat and
power plant or bore hole?

coal fired power plant, a cement factory and trash incineration

Neighbourhood CHP schemes in the UK have been disastrous for their
customers during the recent energy price hikes. They are treated as
business customers and the price rises they get are not capped at all.
(domestic consumers electricity price cap is presently 33p / kWh)

here the price has not increased in 2 years, other citys where the heat is
from gas and heat pumps I think the prices have increased 3-4x

 

[John Larkin]

On Sun, 20 Nov 2022 15:11:12 +0100, \"Carlos E.R.\"
<robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

On 2022-11-20 14:37, Martin Brown wrote:
On 18/11/2022 23:50, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Fri, 18 Nov 2022 10:37:40 +0000, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 17/11/2022 19:00, Ricky wrote:
On Thursday, November 17, 2022 at 11:59:31 AM UTC-5, Joe Gwinn
wrote:
On Thu, 17 Nov 2022 13:39:36 +0000, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

10kW is a fairly reasonable figure for powering a home. Over
engineering it to do 20kW or 40kW continuous would not be good
value for money.

In the UK, perhaps. In the US, lots of homes have gone to 100-amp
220 Vac split phase, or 22 KW. Some have twice that.

No home in the US have gone to 100-amp, 220VAC split phase.  The
nominal voltage in the US is 240V.  I expect very few homes in the US
have been built with 100 amp service in the last 50 years.  In the
70s, there was a big push to use more electric appliances, including
electric radiant heat!   You aren\'t getting that with 100 amp
service.

Well, actually 100-amp is very common, and 200-amp for larger homes.
By split-phase, we do not mean polyphase of any kind.  We mean that we
take power from a single phase and pass it through a transformer with
a center-tapped transformer secondary, with the center connection
(power neutral, white wire in the US) being held very close to earth
ground (green wire in the US).  The two ends of the center-tapped
winding may be both black, or sometimes red and black.  In three-phase
systems, the wires usually have different colors for each of the
phases.  There is a rule that I don\'t remember.

I\'m still slightly confused by the US rural HT distribution scheme.
Do you actually have a single live phase and neutral on the poles?

HT, 3 phases

---- transformer \\---- 120 v
(takes one /
---- phase on \\---- center, grounded
primary) /
---- \\---- 120 v


I\'m not fully sure of the primary, but the secondary should be correct.
It is single phase, with a transformer with a center tap, grounded,
which acts as neutral. The two 120 lives are at 180° one from the other.

What I usually see is three HV wires between poles, and an occasional
pole pig between two wires (ie l-l on a 3 phase feed) making the split
120-n-120 you show.

Many places have a higher, single, grounded wire to catch lightning
bolts. We seldom have lightning here on the west coast to that\'s rare.
It\'s hilly here too, so lightning will generally hit trees on the
peaks.

Commercial feeds can be all sorts of crazy. One common hookup of a
medium-size business is the \"stinger\", 3 phase 240 v l-l, with the ct
of one phase neutral to provide 120-n-120. The third line is the one
that stings.