ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades U.K. Residential service entrance

pauluk said earlier "I've never seen a service taken into a house then continued on to other premises. Very strange!"

hehe Well, work over this way, Paul (West Sussex, UK) in one particular area it is a very common site - loop in/out main - one cable (probably no more than 35mm with concentric neutral) running 6-8 houses each.

I remember once the council went to put electric cookers and electric showers in ..... :-) Needless to say, within a month they were gas cookers and tank-fed showers.

Well, that's my two-pence worth for now....

Steve



[This message has been edited by Steve|Uk (edited 07-21-2003).]

I'm not around long enough to know the full history of distribution here in Ireland but I've always noticed that on older houses there are always 3 porcelen insulators on the wall. The old cables are obviously long gone.

The supply along the street would be 380V 3P + N overhead along poles each house tapping into 1 of the phases + N with the odd house taking all 3 for a workshop/guest house/shop etc..

The connections either run underground to the houses or else a modern single phase cable is anchored to one of the old insulators.

Look like the old system was 3-phase?
or would the 3 insulators be explained by something else?

These houses would date from the 1920s/30s.

I'll take a pic of a few diazed installations here in Ireland when I get the chance too.

They date right up to the mid 80s! (Diazed with RCD..)

I definitely know of a few 1950s panels still very much in use that look very like those swedish ones.

The white unit physically resembles a typical older domestic single phase unit here. Although it would prob. have an RCD tagged alongside it if it was up to code.

These Diazed fuses are quite alien to anything used in residential services in Britain.

In the past, the rewireable fuse was the most usual form of OCPD, and everybody was familiar with having to keep a card of fuse wire handy to repair them. What I find incredible is that these primitive devices were installed for so long in this country. Here's a Wylex type:


So far as I'm aware, Wylex is the only company still manufacturing rewireable fuse carriers. Their standard range panels will also accept BS1361 cartridge fuse carriers and plug-in MCBs, at least making them easy to upgrade.

I'll pull some more rlevant pictures that I've posted previously and add to this thread later.

Which area of West Sussex is that Steve? Just curious -- I used to visit all around that area when I was a kid. Haven't been back there since about 1978, so I guess it's changed a little!

Dave,
On the three insulators on older Irish properties, could it be that they were supplied with 3-wire DC or even 3-wire single-phase AC originally?

I know from some of your earlier comments that 3-ph 220/380 distributrion was the norm by the time the rural electrification program was underway in Ireland, but maybe 3-wire DC/AC systems were once used in the older parts of the larger cities such as Dublin and Cork (i.e. those areas likely to have been wired for power in the early days).

It seems unlikely that it would have been anything other than 220V AC though.

ESB took over the system in the early 30s and very rapidly standardised on 220V 50Hz and 380 V 50hz.

I know that Cork used 110V DC breifly, supplied by the tram system, but these houses would be far too late for that.

3 wire AC would have been 2 X 127V + neutral?

The cabling along the streets seems very old, ornate metal poles carrying 4 cables individually across porceline insulators.

The houses would also all have the remenents of old schuko sockets in the skirtings/walls. Most of which were re-wired in the 1970s / 80s although some of which still use schuko outlets prob. dating back to the 1940s/50s if not a lot earlier.

Interestingly they also usually have 2 small insulators where the old phone lines would have been carried as individidual drop cables from the poles instead of a twisted pair back in the 1920s/30s.

I think electromechanical switching, strowger and rotary, was present in the city area here from the early 30s too. It would have been replaced by Ericsson XBar systems by the 50s though. Although given the age of these cables they could be telegraphy

I was thinking more along the lines of American-style 110/220V, but 127V is a possibility.

Perhaps these places had European-style 127/220V 3-ph distribution along the streets but each house took only two phases, i.e. House #1 on A & B, #2 on A & C, #3 on B & C etc.

WOuld it make sense that with Irish independence newly gained at that time that attention might turn toward European systems rather than relying on established British equipment?

Paul,

Electricity first appeared in Dublin and Cork around 1903 on a commercial scale generated by the respective City Corporations. I don't think it was necessarily built to UK "standards" (which were non-exsistant at the time). As far as I'm aware one of the cities used an edison DC system in the early days.

By 1925 Siemens (or Siemens-Schuckertwerke of Berlin) was heavily involved, the national grid began to be created along with the Shannon hydro electric scheme, actually listed as one of the world's engineering milestones / landmarks ..

So I'd say there was a fairly strong Siemens influence... although it could equally have been Edison / GE etc.. It was all down to cost and selection of a system as opposed to any political motivation.

Siemens offered a sollution at the right price. The UK system was also very poorly standardised with umpteen different voltages, distribution systems etc etc..

ESB was established in 1927 and remains in pretty much the same form in 2003.

http://www.siemens.ie/news/achievement.htm

Original 1925 logo :





Here's the national grid in 1930:



Very pretty for a power station: (Front view)


Full details of the entire project from the IEEE:
http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/milestones_photos/shannon.html


Note the siemens nameplates in the turbine hall! (good ole 1927-30 technology still generating 86MW of eco friendly hydro power today!!!!)



[This message has been edited by djk (edited 07-22-2003).]

I'm not absolutely sure, but I think the standard configurations in the early days of electricity here in Austria were 220/440V 3w DC (Edison system) and 127/220V 3ph AC w/o neutral, maybe with the odd 110V DC system.
That means each larger house would have had +, - and neutral or 3 phases.
I've seen a 1903 advertisement for Municipial Electricity that offers DC in districts 1-9 and 11 to 20, 3ph AC (probably 127/220V) in districts 1, 2 and 10. What happened to districts 21-23 I don't know, maybe they didn't have power back then, though parts of the 21st district are listed for 3ph AC. The PoCo also offered brick lifts, site lighting and arc lights, as well as a large stock of "Nernst lights" specially designed for 220V, white light and huge power savings!
(Taken from an advertisement on the back of a tramway ticket)



and the front of the ticket for those who're interested:

Took a closer look at one of the old hook-ups. There's actually a 4th hook missing an insulator.

I've been told the 3 phases were prob. carried on heavier insulators than the neutral cable hence the 3 phase insulators survived intact. The neutral insulator's actually being used to attach the final clips for the modern cable.

It was 380V to bigger homes and terrices had a 3-phase hook up at the end of the block feeding each house 1 phase + tacked neutral along the facia.

Ah.... That explains it all. You'll sometimes see a similar situation here where the original service to a house was on two individual overhead lines to a bracket carrying two insulators, but a newer concentric-neutral cable has been installed in recent years leaving one insulator unused.

The Irish electrification project makes for interestingf reading nevertheless. As you say, Britain ended up with a real mixture of local generating systems and a whole mess of different nominal voltages of both AC and DC systems which took many decades to get straightened out and standardized.

It's all becoming much clearer now how Ireland ended up with many Continental-style features in its electrical systems.

Tex,
You mentioned the Vienna tram (streetcar) system. Was this run on a 500V DC system, as was common in the Anglo-Saxon world?