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

[Fred Bloggs]

On Sunday, November 20, 2022 at 10:33:02 AM UTC-5, John Larkin wrote:

On Sun, 20 Nov 2022 15:11:12 +0100, \"Carlos E.R.\"
robin_...@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.

That\'s getting back to three phase halving the required copper for the same power delivery at single phase. There are other less obvious benefits such as 3-phase feeds that cancel line harmonic currents from non-linear loads.

 

[John Larkin]

On Sun, 20 Nov 2022 07:48:25 -0800 (PST), Fred Bloggs
<bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, November 20, 2022 at 10:33:02 AM UTC-5, John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 20 Nov 2022 15:11:12 +0100, \"Carlos E.R.\"
robin_...@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.

That\'s getting back to three phase halving the required copper for the same power delivery at single phase. There are other less obvious benefits such as 3-phase feeds that cancel line harmonic currents from non-linear loads.

Some systems are true three phase, 120 or 240 line-to-neutral, with
various single-phase loads rotating among phases. Classicly, the
neutral currents should about cancel, so the N wire was as fat as the
phase wires.

But electronic loads like PCs started making a bunch of peak currents,
6F harmonics that didn\'t cancel, and neutrals started fires. That\'s
one reason we now have PFC power supplies everywhere.

 

[Fred Bloggs]

On Sunday, November 20, 2022 at 11:11:54 AM UTC-5, John Larkin wrote:

On Sun, 20 Nov 2022 07:48:25 -0800 (PST), Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, November 20, 2022 at 10:33:02 AM UTC-5, John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 20 Nov 2022 15:11:12 +0100, \"Carlos E.R.\"
robin_...@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.

That\'s getting back to three phase halving the required copper for the same power delivery at single phase. There are other less obvious benefits such as 3-phase feeds that cancel line harmonic currents from non-linear loads.
Some systems are true three phase, 120 or 240 line-to-neutral, with
various single-phase loads rotating among phases. Classicly, the
neutral currents should about cancel, so the N wire was as fat as the
phase wires.

But electronic loads like PCs started making a bunch of peak currents,
6F harmonics that didn\'t cancel, and neutrals started fires. That\'s
one reason we now have PFC power supplies everywhere.

Another good reason is that harmonics contribute to tripping circuit protection as well as the fundamentals, effectively derating the circuit capacity for power delivery.

 

[Joe Gwinn]

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 lines are at 180° one from the other.

You are correct.

Joe Gwinn

 

[Joe Gwinn]

On Sun, 20 Nov 2022 08:11:45 -0800, John Larkin
<jlarkin@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote:

On Sun, 20 Nov 2022 07:48:25 -0800 (PST), Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, November 20, 2022 at 10:33:02 AM UTC-5, John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 20 Nov 2022 15:11:12 +0100, \"Carlos E.R.\"
robin_...@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.

That\'s getting back to three phase halving the required copper for the same power delivery at single phase. There are other less obvious benefits such as 3-phase feeds that cancel line harmonic currents from non-linear loads.

Some systems are true three phase, 120 or 240 line-to-neutral, with
various single-phase loads rotating among phases. Classicly, the
neutral currents should about cancel, so the N wire was as fat as the
phase wires.

But electronic loads like PCs started making a bunch of peak currents,
6F harmonics that didn\'t cancel, and neutrals started fires. That\'s
one reason we now have PFC power supplies everywhere.

Yes. Some time ago, I published a war story here about the 180-Hz
current from a 3-phase system with capacitor-input DC power supplies
with diode rectifiers - 3-phase current surges yielded a very healthy
3-phase ground current.

Joe Gwinn

 

[Joe Gwinn]

On Fri, 18 Nov 2022 16:55:15 -0800 (PST), Ricky
<gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

On Friday, November 18, 2022 at 6:50:32 PM UTC-5, 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,

Everything I\'ve seen says 200 amps is the norm for new home installations. 100 amps is outdated and will limit the ability to expand electrical use without having to redo the installation. Heck, one neighbor says that the guy on the other side of him had to expand his feed to install a pair of Tesla chargers. I kinda don\'t believe that. These houses were built in the late 80s, early 90s and I am confident that house had 200 amp service from day one. However, Tesla chargers can be as high as 90 amps each, so yeah, if he went that insane, then he might have needed to upgrade a 200 amp service.

Not necessarily. Depends on where it is, and how grand the houses are
in that neighborhood.

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.

You always use white for the common/neutral and black for hot. Red is either switched hot, or the other leg of 240V. If you don\'t have the correct color wire in the cable, you can wrap the last few inches of insulation with the right color tape, to mark it.

That sounds like what I remember.

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.

The voltages in the US are 120 or 240, or in commercial settings, they use a Y transformer for three phase that is 120 to neutral and 208 between phases. There\'s a delta three phase, 240V between phases, but one leg is center tapped and becomes the neutral to provide 120V circuits. I\'m not sure if this has any issues. 480V three phase produces 277V between a phase and ground. In theory, my car is rated to handle 277V, but they talk about it not being rated for the tolerance or maybe the \"real\" world voltages you might see, so I would never consider using it.


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.

Do you mean a UK kettle? US doesn\'t have appliances on 240V unless they are dryers and such. I think they encourage the use of plugs and outlets for stoves now, but not mandatory.

I do mean a UK kettle. We have expatriates who pine for UK tea.

My dryer has a plug. Electric stoves do as well. This for
residences. Eliminates the need for an electrician when it\'s time to
pull stove or dryer out for repair and/or cleaning.

The US functional equivalent to a UK outlet suitable for a tea kettle.
would be NEMA Type 6, for 15 or 20 amps.

..<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEMA_connector>

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.

The bill isn\'t likely to tell you your baseload (the typical minimum usage). I have hourly readings and my \"baseload\" is around a quarter kW. Yup, 256W. It seems to measure in increments of 128W. I assume the meter counts Watt-Hours and they lop off the bottom seven bits, for this report. Taking the difference gives the values of 128, 256 and 384Wh usually. When the water heater is running, the number jumps up to 600 or 700 Wh for one hour. By internally counting in Wh and only truncating on the reports, the overall resolution is preserved.


My house has 100 amp service. But we have a gas stove and water
heater, and oil heat. No electric heat. My shop runs off 220 Vac,
but the big machines are only used intermittently, but will need a
lot of power when doing something heavy.

Do you have a 240V to 220V transformer? If not, you have excessive
voltage drop coming to your house and should ask the power company to
fix that.
There is no transformer. The US definition of \"220 Volt supply\" is
loose enough to allow 240 Vac.

I was being facious. There is no 220V power, it\'s all 240V in North America. Even a low voltage should be well above 220V. But their actually *is* a transformer that steps the voltage down from some thousands of volts to 240. They have taps to adjust the voltage to your house, so it\'s close to 240V. If the daily cycle of load causes excessive variation, someone undersized the wiring.


I\'ll have to measure what we are
getting. I certainly can get the utility to change that, if it\'s out
of spec. Which I very much doubt.

220V is very much out of spec in the US.

A range of +/- 6% seems to be common. 240+6% is 254.4 Vac. 240-6% is
225.6 Vac. So 230 Vac is OK.

At home, what I\'m getting at 8:00 PM Saturday evening is 244 volts and
122 volts.


But this may well cover it:

..<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity>


..<https://voltage-disturbance.com/voltage-quality/voltage-tolerance-standard-ansi-c84-1/>

UK says it has 240v but in reality all of Europe uses a ~230v nominal
voltage with an asymmetric tolerance band see for example:

www.spenergynetworks.co.uk/pages/voltage_changes.aspx#:~:text=declared,216.2%20volts%20to%20253.0%20volts.
A similar story in the US.

Yes, although the voltage tolerance is tighter on the high side, depending on the frequency of occurrence.

\"Range A service voltage range is plus or minus 5% of nominal.
The Range B utilization voltage range is plus 6% to minus 13% of nominal.\"

Range A is typical use. Range B is infrequent occurrences.


Most appliances (including air conditioners) are 120 Vac and 15 or
20 amps. Things like clothes dryers are 220 Vac. Many people have
electric water heaters. also 220 Vac.

If you have 120V on the low voltage outlets, how do you get 220V on
the high voltage circuits? Is your line not balanced with one at
120V and the other at 100V?

It is likely that as in the UK confusion reigns about actual mains
voltage - so few consumers ever measure it and think they have 240v. It
could in reality be as low as 216 or high as 253 and still (just) in spec.
Same kind of story in the US. Might be the same exact limits.

First, in the US, we are starting at 240V. Then we have different tolerances.

See above.

Joe Gwinn

 

[Ricky]

On Sunday, November 20, 2022 at 7:56:11 AM UTC-5, Carlos E.R. wrote:

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.

So?

You keep talking about irrelevant points. We were talking about the cost of the connection size. You have somehow conflated that with the monthly bill. I guess you don\'t understand what I\'m talking about. So probably time to give up.

--

Rick C.

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

 

[Ricky]

On Sunday, November 20, 2022 at 6:00:24 PM UTC-5, Joe Gwinn wrote:

On Fri, 18 Nov 2022 16:55:15 -0800 (PST), Ricky
gnuarm.del...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Friday, November 18, 2022 at 6:50:32 PM UTC-5, 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,

Everything I\'ve seen says 200 amps is the norm for new home installations. 100 amps is outdated and will limit the ability to expand electrical use without having to redo the installation. Heck, one neighbor says that the guy on the other side of him had to expand his feed to install a pair of Tesla chargers. I kinda don\'t believe that. These houses were built in the late 80s, early 90s and I am confident that house had 200 amp service from day one. However, Tesla chargers can be as high as 90 amps each, so yeah, if he went that insane, then he might have needed to upgrade a 200 amp service..

Not necessarily. Depends on where it is, and how grand the houses are
in that neighborhood.

Of course, everything depends on everything, but these days, 200A service is the norm for all but the smallest houses. Do some reading.

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.

You always use white for the common/neutral and black for hot. Red is either switched hot, or the other leg of 240V. If you don\'t have the correct color wire in the cable, you can wrap the last few inches of insulation with the right color tape, to mark it.

That sounds like what I remember.
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.

The voltages in the US are 120 or 240, or in commercial settings, they use a Y transformer for three phase that is 120 to neutral and 208 between phases. There\'s a delta three phase, 240V between phases, but one leg is center tapped and becomes the neutral to provide 120V circuits. I\'m not sure if this has any issues. 480V three phase produces 277V between a phase and ground. In theory, my car is rated to handle 277V, but they talk about it not being rated for the tolerance or maybe the \"real\" world voltages you might see, so I would never consider using it.


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.

Do you mean a UK kettle? US doesn\'t have appliances on 240V unless they are dryers and such. I think they encourage the use of plugs and outlets for stoves now, but not mandatory.

I do mean a UK kettle. We have expatriates who pine for UK tea.

Did they bring their UK water with them?

My dryer has a plug. Electric stoves do as well. This for
residences. Eliminates the need for an electrician when it\'s time to
pull stove or dryer out for repair and/or cleaning.

Yes, that\'s what I said. These sockets will be behind the appliance where no one can get to them since they are not for general use. It seems a bit of a contradiction that we share the feed for 120V outlets, but nothing else. You can overload a 120V line and there\'s nothing to stop you. But code stops you from sharing a 240V line.

The US functional equivalent to a UK outlet suitable for a tea kettle.
would be NEMA Type 6, for 15 or 20 amps.

.<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEMA_connector
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.

The bill isn\'t likely to tell you your baseload (the typical minimum usage). I have hourly readings and my \"baseload\" is around a quarter kW. Yup, 256W. It seems to measure in increments of 128W. I assume the meter counts Watt-Hours and they lop off the bottom seven bits, for this report. Taking the difference gives the values of 128, 256 and 384Wh usually. When the water heater is running, the number jumps up to 600 or 700 Wh for one hour. By internally counting in Wh and only truncating on the reports, the overall resolution is preserved.


My house has 100 amp service. But we have a gas stove and water
heater, and oil heat. No electric heat. My shop runs off 220 Vac,
but the big machines are only used intermittently, but will need a
lot of power when doing something heavy.

Do you have a 240V to 220V transformer? If not, you have excessive
voltage drop coming to your house and should ask the power company to
fix that.
There is no transformer. The US definition of \"220 Volt supply\" is
loose enough to allow 240 Vac.

I was being facious. There is no 220V power, it\'s all 240V in North America. Even a low voltage should be well above 220V. But their actually *is* a transformer that steps the voltage down from some thousands of volts to 240. They have taps to adjust the voltage to your house, so it\'s close to 240V. If the daily cycle of load causes excessive variation, someone undersized the wiring.


I\'ll have to measure what we are
getting. I certainly can get the utility to change that, if it\'s out
of spec. Which I very much doubt.

220V is very much out of spec in the US.

A range of +/- 6% seems to be common. 240+6% is 254.4 Vac. 240-6% is
225.6 Vac. So 230 Vac is OK.

At home, what I\'m getting at 8:00 PM Saturday evening is 244 volts and
122 volts.


But this may well cover it:

.<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity


.<https://voltage-disturbance.com/voltage-quality/voltage-tolerance-standard-ansi-c84-1/


UK says it has 240v but in reality all of Europe uses a ~230v nominal
voltage with an asymmetric tolerance band see for example:

www.spenergynetworks.co.uk/pages/voltage_changes.aspx#:~:text=declared,216.2%20volts%20to%20253.0%20volts.
A similar story in the US.

Yes, although the voltage tolerance is tighter on the high side, depending on the frequency of occurrence.

\"Range A service voltage range is plus or minus 5% of nominal.
The Range B utilization voltage range is plus 6% to minus 13% of nominal..\"

Range A is typical use. Range B is infrequent occurrences.


Most appliances (including air conditioners) are 120 Vac and 15 or
20 amps. Things like clothes dryers are 220 Vac. Many people have
electric water heaters. also 220 Vac.

If you have 120V on the low voltage outlets, how do you get 220V on
the high voltage circuits? Is your line not balanced with one at
120V and the other at 100V?

It is likely that as in the UK confusion reigns about actual mains
voltage - so few consumers ever measure it and think they have 240v. It
could in reality be as low as 216 or high as 253 and still (just) in spec.
Same kind of story in the US. Might be the same exact limits.

First, in the US, we are starting at 240V. Then we have different tolerances.

See above.

See what? You incorrectly stated the tolerances as ±6% when they are ±5%.

--

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

 

[Joe Gwinn]

On Sun, 20 Nov 2022 16:25:20 -0800 (PST), Ricky
<gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, November 20, 2022 at 6:00:24 PM UTC-5, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Fri, 18 Nov 2022 16:55:15 -0800 (PST), Ricky
gnuarm.del...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Friday, November 18, 2022 at 6:50:32 PM UTC-5, 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,

Everything I\'ve seen says 200 amps is the norm for new home installations. 100 amps is outdated and will limit the ability to expand electrical use without having to redo the installation. Heck, one neighbor says that the guy on the other side of him had to expand his feed to install a pair of Tesla chargers. I kinda don\'t believe that. These houses were built in the late 80s, early 90s and I am confident that house had 200 amp service from day one. However, Tesla chargers can be as high as 90 amps each, so yeah, if he went that insane, then he might have needed to upgrade a 200 amp service.

Not necessarily. Depends on where it is, and how grand the houses are
in that neighborhood.

Of course, everything depends on everything, but these days, 200A service is the norm for all but the smallest houses. Do some reading.


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.

You always use white for the common/neutral and black for hot. Red is either switched hot, or the other leg of 240V. If you don\'t have the correct color wire in the cable, you can wrap the last few inches of insulation with the right color tape, to mark it.

That sounds like what I remember.
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.

The voltages in the US are 120 or 240, or in commercial settings, they use a Y transformer for three phase that is 120 to neutral and 208 between phases. There\'s a delta three phase, 240V between phases, but one leg is center tapped and becomes the neutral to provide 120V circuits. I\'m not sure if this has any issues. 480V three phase produces 277V between a phase and ground. In theory, my car is rated to handle 277V, but they talk about it not being rated for the tolerance or maybe the \"real\" world voltages you might see, so I would never consider using it.


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.

Do you mean a UK kettle? US doesn\'t have appliances on 240V unless they are dryers and such. I think they encourage the use of plugs and outlets for stoves now, but not mandatory.

I do mean a UK kettle. We have expatriates who pine for UK tea.

Did they bring their UK water with them?


My dryer has a plug. Electric stoves do as well. This for
residences. Eliminates the need for an electrician when it\'s time to
pull stove or dryer out for repair and/or cleaning.

Yes, that\'s what I said. These sockets will be behind the appliance where no one can get to them since they are not for general use. It seems a bit of a contradiction that we share the feed for 120V outlets, but nothing else. You can overload a 120V line and there\'s nothing to stop you. But code stops you from sharing a 240V line.


The US functional equivalent to a UK outlet suitable for a tea kettle.
would be NEMA Type 6, for 15 or 20 amps.

.<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEMA_connector
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.

The bill isn\'t likely to tell you your baseload (the typical minimum usage). I have hourly readings and my \"baseload\" is around a quarter kW. Yup, 256W. It seems to measure in increments of 128W. I assume the meter counts Watt-Hours and they lop off the bottom seven bits, for this report. Taking the difference gives the values of 128, 256 and 384Wh usually. When the water heater is running, the number jumps up to 600 or 700 Wh for one hour. By internally counting in Wh and only truncating on the reports, the overall resolution is preserved.


My house has 100 amp service. But we have a gas stove and water
heater, and oil heat. No electric heat. My shop runs off 220 Vac,
but the big machines are only used intermittently, but will need a
lot of power when doing something heavy.

Do you have a 240V to 220V transformer? If not, you have excessive
voltage drop coming to your house and should ask the power company to
fix that.
There is no transformer. The US definition of \"220 Volt supply\" is
loose enough to allow 240 Vac.

I was being facious. There is no 220V power, it\'s all 240V in North America. Even a low voltage should be well above 220V. But their actually *is* a transformer that steps the voltage down from some thousands of volts to 240. They have taps to adjust the voltage to your house, so it\'s close to 240V. If the daily cycle of load causes excessive variation, someone undersized the wiring.


I\'ll have to measure what we are
getting. I certainly can get the utility to change that, if it\'s out
of spec. Which I very much doubt.

220V is very much out of spec in the US.

A range of +/- 6% seems to be common. 240+6% is 254.4 Vac. 240-6% is
225.6 Vac. So 230 Vac is OK.

At home, what I\'m getting at 8:00 PM Saturday evening is 244 volts and
122 volts.


But this may well cover it:

.<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity


.<https://voltage-disturbance.com/voltage-quality/voltage-tolerance-standard-ansi-c84-1/


UK says it has 240v but in reality all of Europe uses a ~230v nominal
voltage with an asymmetric tolerance band see for example:

www.spenergynetworks.co.uk/pages/voltage_changes.aspx#:~:text=declared,216.2%20volts%20to%20253.0%20volts.
A similar story in the US.

Yes, although the voltage tolerance is tighter on the high side, depending on the frequency of occurrence.

\"Range A service voltage range is plus or minus 5% of nominal.
The Range B utilization voltage range is plus 6% to minus 13% of nominal.\"

Range A is typical use. Range B is infrequent occurrences.


Most appliances (including air conditioners) are 120 Vac and 15 or
20 amps. Things like clothes dryers are 220 Vac. Many people have
electric water heaters. also 220 Vac.

If you have 120V on the low voltage outlets, how do you get 220V on
the high voltage circuits? Is your line not balanced with one at
120V and the other at 100V?

It is likely that as in the UK confusion reigns about actual mains
voltage - so few consumers ever measure it and think they have 240v. It
could in reality be as low as 216 or high as 253 and still (just) in spec.
Same kind of story in the US. Might be the same exact limits.

First, in the US, we are starting at 240V. Then we have different tolerances.

See above.

See what? You incorrectly stated the tolerances as ±6% when they are ±5%.

Hmm. Get a life - this is bulk power, not a standards lab.

Joe Gwinn

 

[Ricky]

On Sunday, November 20, 2022 at 8:16:12 PM UTC-5, Joe Gwinn wrote:

On Sun, 20 Nov 2022 16:25:20 -0800 (PST), Ricky
gnuarm.del...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, November 20, 2022 at 6:00:24 PM UTC-5, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Fri, 18 Nov 2022 16:55:15 -0800 (PST), Ricky
gnuarm.del...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Friday, November 18, 2022 at 6:50:32 PM UTC-5, 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,

Everything I\'ve seen says 200 amps is the norm for new home installations. 100 amps is outdated and will limit the ability to expand electrical use without having to redo the installation. Heck, one neighbor says that the guy on the other side of him had to expand his feed to install a pair of Tesla chargers. I kinda don\'t believe that. These houses were built in the late 80s, early 90s and I am confident that house had 200 amp service from day one. However, Tesla chargers can be as high as 90 amps each, so yeah, if he went that insane, then he might have needed to upgrade a 200 amp service.

Not necessarily. Depends on where it is, and how grand the houses are
in that neighborhood.

Of course, everything depends on everything, but these days, 200A service is the norm for all but the smallest houses. Do some reading.


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.

You always use white for the common/neutral and black for hot. Red is either switched hot, or the other leg of 240V. If you don\'t have the correct color wire in the cable, you can wrap the last few inches of insulation with the right color tape, to mark it.

That sounds like what I remember.
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.

The voltages in the US are 120 or 240, or in commercial settings, they use a Y transformer for three phase that is 120 to neutral and 208 between phases. There\'s a delta three phase, 240V between phases, but one leg is center tapped and becomes the neutral to provide 120V circuits. I\'m not sure if this has any issues. 480V three phase produces 277V between a phase and ground. In theory, my car is rated to handle 277V, but they talk about it not being rated for the tolerance or maybe the \"real\" world voltages you might see, so I would never consider using it.


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.

Do you mean a UK kettle? US doesn\'t have appliances on 240V unless they are dryers and such. I think they encourage the use of plugs and outlets for stoves now, but not mandatory.

I do mean a UK kettle. We have expatriates who pine for UK tea.

Did they bring their UK water with them?


My dryer has a plug. Electric stoves do as well. This for
residences. Eliminates the need for an electrician when it\'s time to
pull stove or dryer out for repair and/or cleaning.

Yes, that\'s what I said. These sockets will be behind the appliance where no one can get to them since they are not for general use. It seems a bit of a contradiction that we share the feed for 120V outlets, but nothing else. You can overload a 120V line and there\'s nothing to stop you. But code stops you from sharing a 240V line.


The US functional equivalent to a UK outlet suitable for a tea kettle.
would be NEMA Type 6, for 15 or 20 amps.

.<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEMA_connector
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.

The bill isn\'t likely to tell you your baseload (the typical minimum usage). I have hourly readings and my \"baseload\" is around a quarter kW. Yup, 256W. It seems to measure in increments of 128W. I assume the meter counts Watt-Hours and they lop off the bottom seven bits, for this report. Taking the difference gives the values of 128, 256 and 384Wh usually. When the water heater is running, the number jumps up to 600 or 700 Wh for one hour. By internally counting in Wh and only truncating on the reports, the overall resolution is preserved.


My house has 100 amp service. But we have a gas stove and water
heater, and oil heat. No electric heat. My shop runs off 220 Vac,
but the big machines are only used intermittently, but will need a
lot of power when doing something heavy.

Do you have a 240V to 220V transformer? If not, you have excessive
voltage drop coming to your house and should ask the power company to
fix that.
There is no transformer. The US definition of \"220 Volt supply\" is
loose enough to allow 240 Vac.

I was being facious. There is no 220V power, it\'s all 240V in North America. Even a low voltage should be well above 220V. But their actually *is* a transformer that steps the voltage down from some thousands of volts to 240. They have taps to adjust the voltage to your house, so it\'s close to 240V. If the daily cycle of load causes excessive variation, someone undersized the wiring.


I\'ll have to measure what we are
getting. I certainly can get the utility to change that, if it\'s out
of spec. Which I very much doubt.

220V is very much out of spec in the US.

A range of +/- 6% seems to be common. 240+6% is 254.4 Vac. 240-6% is
225.6 Vac. So 230 Vac is OK.

At home, what I\'m getting at 8:00 PM Saturday evening is 244 volts and
122 volts.


But this may well cover it:

.<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity


.<https://voltage-disturbance.com/voltage-quality/voltage-tolerance-standard-ansi-c84-1/


UK says it has 240v but in reality all of Europe uses a ~230v nominal
voltage with an asymmetric tolerance band see for example:

www.spenergynetworks.co.uk/pages/voltage_changes.aspx#:~:text=declared,216.2%20volts%20to%20253.0%20volts.
A similar story in the US.

Yes, although the voltage tolerance is tighter on the high side, depending on the frequency of occurrence.

\"Range A service voltage range is plus or minus 5% of nominal.
The Range B utilization voltage range is plus 6% to minus 13% of nominal.\"

Range A is typical use. Range B is infrequent occurrences.


Most appliances (including air conditioners) are 120 Vac and 15 or
20 amps. Things like clothes dryers are 220 Vac. Many people have
electric water heaters. also 220 Vac.

If you have 120V on the low voltage outlets, how do you get 220V on
the high voltage circuits? Is your line not balanced with one at
120V and the other at 100V?

It is likely that as in the UK confusion reigns about actual mains
voltage - so few consumers ever measure it and think they have 240v. It
could in reality be as low as 216 or high as 253 and still (just) in spec.
Same kind of story in the US. Might be the same exact limits.

First, in the US, we are starting at 240V. Then we have different tolerances.

See above.

See what? You incorrectly stated the tolerances as ±6% when they are ±5%.
Hmm. Get a life - this is bulk power, not a standards lab.

??? You state an incorrect specification and you seem to be blaming me?

--

Rick C.

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

 

[Martin Brown]

On 20/11/2022 13:26, Carlos E.R. wrote:

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

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.

In the UK the model seems to be one EV charger per however many parking
spaces in shared facility carparks with only electric vehicles allowed
to park in the charging spots and for maximum 90 minutes to charge up.

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

Certainly the public ones at supermarkets and most (but not quite all)
charging hubs are much more expensive than domestic electricity and you
seem to need several different charging apps to use them. One of the new
promised superhubs has finally opened at York (the other is still
waiting to get an electricity supply - you couldn\'t make it up!).

https://rawcharging.com/yorkshires-newest-ev-charging-hub-opens-at-mcarthurglen-designer-outlet-york/

The advertising picture brilliantly demonstrates the stupidity of the
way they are configured. If the charger was surrounded by 4 spaces then
there could be one charging and one waiting to start or still parked up.
The charging hardware is still rare and expensive so surrounding it with
vehicles to charge would make a lot more sense.

A few private carparks have the more sensible one charger to serve four
spaces configuration but all too often they are one charger per space.

Then people get £60 fines for overstaying their 90 minute charge slot.

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.

The mains fuse and the calibrated meter still have lead seals here. They
aren\'t very convincing at all. Most hacks to steal power seem to consist
of copper nails driven through the tails before the meter.

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.

It has been interesting finding out about the details of your system.
Every country has a few peculiarities about mains power and telecoms.


--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2022-11-21 10:37, Martin Brown wrote:

On 20/11/2022 13:26, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2022-11-20 11:57, Martin Brown wrote:

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.

In the UK the model seems to be one EV charger per however many parking
spaces in shared facility carparks with only electric vehicles allowed
to park in the charging spots and for maximum 90 minutes to charge up.

Ah.

In our case (in a building of flats) the parking slots are assigned,
each one is owned by one single owner (with deed and all), so there
can\'t be sharing of charging spots.

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

Certainly the public ones at supermarkets and most (but not quite all)
charging hubs are much more expensive than domestic electricity and you
seem to need several different charging apps to use them. One of the new
promised superhubs has finally opened at York (the other is still
waiting to get an electricity supply - you couldn\'t make it up!).

Yes, I heard a bit of that. App nightmare. Travelling, having a charging
spot but not the right app/contract.

https://rawcharging.com/yorkshires-newest-ev-charging-hub-opens-at-mcarthurglen-designer-outlet-york/

The advertising picture brilliantly demonstrates the stupidity of the
way they are configured. If the charger was surrounded by 4 spaces then
there could be one charging and one waiting to start or still parked up.
The charging hardware is still rare and expensive so surrounding it with
vehicles to charge would make a lot more sense.

A few private carparks have the more sensible one charger to serve four
spaces configuration but all too often they are one charger per space.

I see a problem with that. One car charging, another parked and waiting.
When the first one finishes, he leaves and another client is fast and
parks there; sees the cable not been used and takes it, before the car
that was waiting there notices and comes.

Then people get £60 fines for overstaying their 90 minute charge slot.

Wow.

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.

The mains fuse and the calibrated meter still have lead seals here. They
aren\'t very convincing at all. Most hacks to steal power seem to consist
of copper nails driven through the tails before the meter.

I know of hacks here, but they seem to be changing the live wires
leading to a house, to the meter of a neighbour.

I have not heard of hacking the firmware of the meter. Maybe there is,
but I have not heard of it.

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.

It has been interesting finding out about the details of your system.
Every country has a few peculiarities about mains power and telecoms.

Yep

--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[ke...@kjwdesigns.com]

On Monday, 21 November 2022 at 04:16:14 UTC-8, Carlos E.R. wrote:
....

The advertising picture brilliantly demonstrates the stupidity of the
way they are configured. If the charger was surrounded by 4 spaces then
there could be one charging and one waiting to start or still parked up..
The charging hardware is still rare and expensive so surrounding it with
vehicles to charge would make a lot more sense.

It may not be quite as bad as that - the expensive charging hardware is not at the post itself but usually mounted in equipment racks some distance away and is often shared between two or more charging heads.

A few private carparks have the more sensible one charger to serve four
spaces configuration but all too often they are one charger per space.
I see a problem with that. One car charging, another parked and waiting.
When the first one finishes, he leaves and another client is fast and
parks there; sees the cable not been used and takes it, before the car
that was waiting there notices and comes.

....
ChargePoint (and maybe other charging providers) deal with that by instituting a five minute period grace period after the cable is replaced where only the person next on the waitlist can unlock and remove the cable and start charging. Authentication is performed by card or phone app.

kw

 

[Commander Kinsey]

On Fri, 18 Nov 2022 19:06:59 -0000, ke...@kjwdesigns.com <keith@kjwdesigns.com> wrote:

On Thursday, 17 November 2022 at 01:27:46 UTC-8, 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.

Five hundred Dollars is rather optimistic - more like $2-5K for a 10kW inverter.

For example:

https://shopsolarkits.com/collections/solar-power-inverters?custom=Product%20Type

Do you like being ripped off? $1K https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/193572450281

 

[Commander Kinsey]

On Sat, 19 Nov 2022 10:34:41 -0000, Fred Bloggs <bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:

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.

Finally, you understood and answered my question. The difference between 10kW backup mode and 80kW driving mode is sustainability.

 

[Commander Kinsey]

On Thu, 17 Nov 2022 13:34:26 -0000, Fred Bloggs <bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> 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.

You\'re the one getting mixed up with kW and kWh.

And that last link doesn\'t tell you how to do it, just sales waffle about Ford are getting to it.

It wasn\'t a DIY project article. The responsible authorities don\'t want clueless yokels touching anything to do with it, so much so you may juts be liable to arrest if you do.

Arrested for using your car battery for something else, yeah right.

Pretty easy really, you find the 400V battery wire and connect a convertor to it to make 240VAC.

There are many more considerations to doing that you\'re unaware of.

And you too, or you would have written them down.

 

[Commander Kinsey]

On Sat, 19 Nov 2022 15:04:05 -0000, danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com> wrote:

In <95961fff-5629-4bb1-bd93-69b9cb8e958cn@googlegroups.com> trader_4 <trader4@optonline.net> writes:

[snip]

Now you\'re off on to something else, the capacity of home chargers.
From what I see level two chargers top out at about half that, so take
it up with the EV car companies and charger manufacturer\'s without
regard to using the car to power the house in an emergency.

Summarizing:

A \"Level I\" charger (AKA a \"convenience charger\") almost always
comes with the car and is designed to plug into a standard
household 120VAC outlet.

Hence... it\'s limited to (nominally some are a bit higher)
twelve amps/1,400 watts. About as much power as a toaster oven.

And in sensible countries with a proper voltage, the slowest charger plugs into a proper 13A 240V socket and gives out 3kW.

These will typically give your car 5 miles of range for
every hour of charging.

So use it next week then.

A \"Level II\", which uses 240VAC, typically both has the
higher (doubled) voltage and also... twice the amperage.

So instead of 1,400 watts they\'ll be more like 6,000 watts,
and give you 25 miles/hour of charge.

These use a basic 240V outlet (the type you\'d have for
an electric dryer or electric stove, or a large window
air conditioner..).

You have dryers that use 6kW?! I know American clothes are much larger, but still....

Pretty much any modern US home has
the capacity, but you might have to run cabling from
your breaker panel. (Straightforward for any licensed
and experienced electrician or well, err, grounded,
handy person).

You can get Level II\'s that go a fair amount higher,
but that gets tricky... And then there are the various
versions of \"super chargers\". Your head will hurt.

Just go for it and have a 24kW charger.

 

[Commander Kinsey]

On Sat, 19 Nov 2022 17:23:44 -0000, Ricky <gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

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.

A post can be read and responded to by anyone. When I said \"And why do people say it costs tho.....\", you didn\'t seem to know who I was talking to, I can\'t tell to help you out now, since you snipped the attributions.

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.

But you weren\'t talking about invertors, you said EVSE.

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?

Because I live cheaply on Chinese stuff. 99p for an 18650 battery charger!

 

[Commander Kinsey]

On Sat, 19 Nov 2022 17:26:34 -0000, Ricky <gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote:

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?

You switch one off while you cook. It\'s only for the duration of the power outage.

> Why are you mixing kW and kWh?

I did no such thing. If you believe I did, show me where I did.

 

[Ed Lee]

On Monday, November 21, 2022 at 3:09:04 PM UTC-8, Commander Kinsey wrote:

On Sat, 19 Nov 2022 17:23:44 -0000, Ricky <gnuarm.del...@gmail.com> wrote:

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.

A post can be read and responded to by anyone. When I said \"And why do people say it costs tho.....\", you didn\'t seem to know who I was talking to, I can\'t tell to help you out now, since you snipped the attributions.

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.

But you weren\'t talking about invertors, you said EVSE.

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?

Absolutely, i got a 3kW 48V to 220V for $99. 10kW for $999 is too expensive.