EV Car House Electricity Feed Upgrade

[myPinballs]

Some interesting info yesterday from a northern power grid guy. Came to inspect my feed as a precursor to a fast electric charge point to be installed early next year.

I was slightly surprised they needed to visit as the feed stated 100A on the main fuse, but as the guy explained 100A doesnt actually mean you have a 100A fuse it just means its the max rated fuse that can be used.

I actually had a 60A fuse installed and he upgraded to 80A. Nice guy and we had a chat about various infrastructure things.

- Firstly northern power grid is manually checking every house fuse and switching to 80A from whatever you have!! Quite an undertaking!
- Secondly, 3 phase is being reintroduced for new builds and also old houses !! I found this bizarre as i've still got that linked in my head to industrial places and if you had lathes and big equipment in your garage!! Seems they think 3 separate 80A feeds is better than uprating the single one higher than 80A. I guess it makes sense to split car charging off to its own feed for future proofing.
- Thirdly, he mentioned alot of properties still do not have their own isolation fuse and are chained down the street!!! jesus!!

 

[JT.]

Some interesting info yesterday from a northern power grid guy. Came to inspect my feed as a precursor to a fast electric charge point to be installed early next year.

I was slightly surprised they needed to visit as the feed stated 100A on the main fuse, but as the guy explained 100A doesnt actually mean you have a 100A fuse it just means its the max rated fuse that can be used.

I actually had a 60A fuse installed and he upgraded to 80A. Nice guy and we had a chat about various infrastructure things.

- Firstly northern power grid is manually checking every house fuse and switching to 80A from whatever you have!! Quite an undertaking!
- Secondly, 3 phase is being reintroduced for new builds and also old houses !! I found this bizarre as i've still got that linked in my head to industrial places and if you had lathes and big equipment in your garage!! Seems they think 3 separate 80A feeds is better than uprating the single one higher than 80A. I guess it makes sense to split car charging off to its own feed for future proofing.
- Thirdly, he mentioned alot of properties still do not have their own isolation fuse and are chained down the street!!! jesus!!

The 3 phase introduction is interesting - I wonder if there's a government policy that's guiding that approach, and ensuring the knock on implications around having stuff in houses that's compatible with 3 phase are considered. E.g. mandating that solar power inverters and batteries are 3-phase compatible in the future. Hopefully there's some overarching strategy/legislation in place guiding this and I'd be interested if anyone knows.

 

[myPinballs]

The 3 phase introduction is interesting - I wonder if there's a government policy that's guiding that approach, and ensuring the knock on implications around having stuff in houses that's compatible with 3 phase are considered. E.g. mandating that solar power inverters and batteries are 3-phase compatible in the future. Hopefully there's some overarching strategy/legislation in place guiding this and I'd be interested if anyone knows.

There you go being all logical and sensible!! If the government is involved i suspect they haven't even thought about any of this and its the power companies actually sorting out the mess.

 

[Monkeyboypaul]

Had our EV charge point installed 2yrs ago. NPG didn't understand that the charger (Zappi) could detect your house load and reduce down to avoid going over your fuse limit (i.e. intelligent). They went straight to the quote for 'unlooping' us from our 2 neighbours (we're the middle of 2 others) at around £2-3k. It took a bit of back and forth but needless to say it's sorted now.

If you're going down the EV route, I recommend getting a smart meter installed sooner rather than later, that way you can tap into the smart tariffs and much better overnight pricing. Currently paying 7.5p per kWh between 2330-0530, for everything. These last few months I've only used 99.9% off-peak for the whole house (using Tesla PowerWall). We had to get our Henly block updated too, as it was all old - they upgraded the fuse to 100A at that stage. That paved the way for a reasonable solar/battery install this Summer too.

Henly/mains incoming upgrade > Smart Meter > EV charger > Solar/battery.

 

[Monkeyboypaul]

The 3 phase introduction is interesting - I wonder if there's a government policy that's guiding that approach, and ensuring the knock on implications around having stuff in houses that's compatible with 3 phase are considered. E.g. mandating that solar power inverters and batteries are 3-phase compatible in the future. Hopefully there's some overarching strategy/legislation in place guiding this and I'd be interested if anyone knows.

At the moment you buy 3Phase or single phase inverters - there's no cross over. Batteries are 1 stack per phase, or all on the single phase.

 

[myPinballs]

My favourite point is someone somewhere in whitehall decides oh yes electic cars!! we want these, but has **** all clue about the amount of work and sorting out companies like northern power grid have to do to actually make this a reality!! My house is over a 100 years old but luckily had been upgraded in the 70s or so with a decent separate feed. The housing stock in the uk is a right mixture, so its a really big job to sort out. Then there's gas and its EOL, but lets not get into that haha

 

[myPinballs]

Had our EV charge point installed 2yrs ago. NPG didn't understand that the charger (Zappi) could detect your house load and reduce down to avoid going over your fuse limit (i.e. intelligent). They went straight to the quote for 'unlooping' us from our 2 neighbours (we're the middle of 2 others) at around £2-3k. It took a bit of back and forth but needless to say it's sorted now.

If you're going down the EV route, I recommend getting a smart meter installed sooner rather than later, that way you can tap into the smart tariffs and much better overnight pricing. Currently paying 7.5p per kWh between 2330-0530, for everything. These last few months I've only used 99.9% off-peak for the whole house (using Tesla PowerWall). We had to get our Henry block updated too, as it was all old - they upgraded the fuse to 100A at that stage. That paved the way for a reasonable solar/battery install this Summer too.

Henly/mains incoming upgrade > Smart Meter > EV charger > Solar/battery.

Yes unlooping makes sense though, not being able to physically isolate you house without effecting others seems like madness!! haha

My wife and i have a joke that in the future with the smart charging and special rates we all get at night, we are all gonna be sitting in our ev cars with the heaters on full and all our 5v devices plugged in to the cigarette lighter to charge up as thats gonna be the only way to stay warm and use your phone in an evening lol!!!!!! The electric Mad max future sort of hahah

 

[Monkeyboypaul]

Yes unlooping makes sense though, not being able to physically isolate you house without effecting others seems like madness!! haha

My wife and i have a joke that in the future with the smart charging and special rates we all get at night, we are all gonna be sitting in our ev cars with the heaters on full and all our 5v devices plugged in to the cigarette lighter to charge up as thats gonna be the only way to stay warm and use your phone in an evening lol!!!!!! The electric Mad max future sort of hahah

Unlooping makes total sense, but why is that my expense?? It felt like they were just trying to get me to pay to fix their infrastructure!

My wife's already moaning about the noise from the dishwasher going on overnight, luckily she can't hear the washing machine as its too far away

In Summer it'll be the opposite - get it all done while the Sun's out and I've got the excess, although economically it's cheaper to consume grid at 7.5p overnight and sell the solar back at 15p during the day (for which Octopus will resell it at 30p-ish).

 

[M4carp]

Seen plenty of houses that are supposed to be 60/80amp with 100amp fuses fitted, incoming cable can normally handle it and that’s in really old houses. Had a conversation with the utilities guys years ago.

If you are over doing it on the power expect to see tar like material dripping from from the incoming fuse holder if it’s an old one, the newer style grey 100amp incoming fuse holders are what you really want fitted. Never seen one of those burnt out.

Wow never seen a house without an incoming isolation fuse before but the furthest north I have worked is Northampton

 

[Asiapinball]

First new build development with 3 phase was in Rhondda Valley a few years back. There are a few interesting technical vids on YouTube Including this one from the guys doing the installation.

The size of the distribution boards is huge.

 

[taz turbo]

I had a smart meter fitted some time ago, when the meter was fitted they pulled the main incoming fuse, although the holder was marked up at 100A to my surprise it was a 60A fuse fitted, a surprise as I regularly saw 65A+ on my smart meter dashboard.

As I had a solar/battery storage system
Fitted, I had the incoming fuse upgraded to a 100A, they changed the fuse and holder.

I had to tell the supplier why I wanted a 100A fuse as they only typically fit 80A fuses.

EV charger 32A at full charge limit
Storage batteries 44A at full charge limit
2 heat pumps
All the usual household appliances

They agreed to a 100A fuse very quickly.

I use the vast majority of my winter electric at the lowest price off peak rate, summer I’m nett of grid, it all works very well.

Chris.

 

[StandUpAndFight]

Yes unlooping makes sense though, not being able to physically isolate you house without effecting others seems like madness!! haha

My wife and i have a joke that in the future with the smart charging and special rates we all get at night, we are all gonna be sitting in our ev cars with the heaters on full and all our 5v devices plugged in to the cigarette lighter to charge up as thats gonna be the only way to stay warm and use your phone in an evening lol!!!!!! The electric Mad max future sort of hahah

We were looped in with the other half of our semi-detached, and UK Power Networks did it on the day when they came to uprate the fuse. Luckily my neighbours were happy for the work to be done (and were at home) and I wasn't charged a penny for any of it.

 

[DRD]

I had my 60a incoming fuse replaced free of charge by Western Power Networks with a 100a one.

I'd love a three phase supply, but am in no hurry to buy an electric car.