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Joined: Aug 2001
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Single phase loads exceeding 3.6kW (16A) do have to have a separate permission by the PoCo in Austria though.

The European attachment to using 3-phase for very small domestic supplies just strikes me as making things unnecessarily complex. I've seen places in France with the main disjoncteur set at a mere 15A per phase!

I'm just trying to imagine calling the PoCo here and telling them I want permission to connect a 4kW load. I can almost hear the laughter now! [Linked Image]

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Last year in Cognac I arranged with EDF for a 3-phase domestic supply to be raised from 10A per phase to a giddy 15! The problem with 3-phase supplies is even if you have high rated breakers you are continuously trying to not overload breakers by juggling which circuits you use. And you pay more the bigger the breakers are, which is why some folks here are still running a whole house on 30A @ 230v.

Alan


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The major problem in Europe as I see it is that we've multiple maximum amp ratings on plugs.

CEE 7/7 (schuko/french) - 16Amp
Italy - 16A
Switzerland - 10A (with 16A optionally?)
UK, Ireland - 13A
Denmark - 13A

It makes max ratings for appliances a bit tricky!

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Er, 15A 3Phase as the mains??? What Voltage is it again??? 230/400V???

30A 230V mains??? Single Phase correct????


Wow! and I thought that my 100A @230V service was not good enough with everything going!

A.D

[This message has been edited by Rewired (edited 01-14-2006).]

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I suppose there is politics behind that.

In Germany we got a standard of 3 x 63 A @400V/230V for every meter even when it is just a small apartment today.

You pay what you consume, the base price for the meter is rather low. A kWh is at the moment at about € 0.15 - 0.20 here.

As an example, a normal water heater is not forbidden but you're supposed to use instant water heater (18 - 27 kW) for their better ecological qualities.

So in Germany the throttle for consumption is the price of energy, bad for people that cannot afford modern equipment.

In my French house I pay a base price depending on the size of amperage of the meter, for my 6 kW /30A adjusted meter it
is € 4,33 per month plus taxes which isn't much, but the price for a supply comparable to the German standard would be enormous. On the other hand kWh is at € 0,0765, or less than the half of the German price.

As it is a small holiday residence, it is sufficient, to heat water, wash clothes and dish and run a little cooker. The main breakers are rather slow, so I had never any tripping although sometimes using up to 9 kW for a short period.

My idea is that the French politics consists in offering a certain rather poor part of the (rural) population a relatively cheap basic supply not regarding their ecological consumption qualities. The throttle to limit consumption here is the size of the meter.

There is a parallel with their cars. Here in Germany automobile tax depends on the ecological qualities of your car. My actual one was free the first three years and is €108 at the moment. My old car (1992) would now cost about €350 per year. A car without catalyser is maybe about the double (very rare now). This means that older cars generally leave the country as it is impossible to sell them. But the motorways are still free.

In France they haven't any car tax at all. So all the old cars remain as long as the owner can pay the petrol. So the little farmer has lower costs as long as he does not try to ride on a motorway.



With regard to Rangers issue, here it is the same that you have report the installation of big consumers. But this more because they have to guarantee the supply in the normed range and therefore they want to know whether the installed power is covered by the PoCo equipment. Another thing is that as we got 3 phase as an absolute standard, they want you to share the load over the phases. That's why 1 phase equipment above 4 kW(?) is to be authorised. Actually I cannot imagine anything that would need more than 3600W without 3phase wiring.

Wolfgang

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Actually I cannot imagine anything that would need more than 3600W without 3phase wiring.
Neither do I. Large electric water heaters have never been common in Austria or run at 400V between two phases. Ranges are either split over the phases or (ideally) throttled to 16A max and run on single phase (the 25A single phase approach is not exactly up to code).

Actually the French supplies are ridiculous for me. The smalles single phase supply I have ever seen dates from the late 1940ies and is 10A. That was in a very small rural house were there wasn't anything bigger than a few light bulbs and a radio. Vienna had almost exclusively 20 or 25A single phase services for apartments. Three phase starts at 20A, today's standard is 3x25A for apartments or 3x35A for single familiy homes. Anything larger is rare, in all my life I've seen only one apartment with a 3x35A service, IIRC that one had night storage heating _and_ ran a pottery kiln... and likewise I have only seen one 3x63A service. If I remember I can look up the recommendations based on the floor area at school.

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Er, 15A 3Phase as the mains??? What Voltage is it again??? 230/400V???

Yep. Or quite likely 220/380 in actuality if they haven't physically adjusted the transformers for the new official 230V standard yet.

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30A 230V mains??? Single Phase correct????

There used to be 30A (240V single-phase) supplies in Britain. I haven't seen one for a very long time, but I suppose there might still be a few around. I still see 40A services from time to time, although they're getting rarer.

100A is now pretty much the norm for new installations, but there are still a huge number of 60A services in use.

The lower-rated services aren't really a problem until people start wanting to add things like instantaneous electric showers (9 to 10kW) or such like. Remember that we have almost no air-conditioning loads in domestic systems here.

A house using gas heating, and maybe a gas stove could quite easily get by on an old 40A service. Allowing for diversity, the total loading probably nevers gets anywhere near that.

The problem I see with something like the French 15A 3-ph system is not the total power available but the horrendous juggling act you'd have to do with single-phase loads when you can draw barely more than 3kW per phase.

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In my French house I pay a base price depending on the size of amperage of the meter, for my 6 kW /30A adjusted meter it
is ? 4,33 per month plus taxes which isn't much, but the price for a supply comparable to the German standard would be enormous. On the other hand kWh is at ? 0,0765, or less than the half of the German price.

I remember when I first looked at the EDF tariffs a few years ago. As you and Alan have said, they base the fixed standing charge on the service capacity and the price goes up very rapidly for anything above a few kW.

In Britain, you pay no extra standing charge for a 100A supply than you would for a 40 or 60A service. In fact my PoCo just recently scrapped the standing charge completely.



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 01-15-2006).]

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There is a parallel with their cars. Here in Germany automobile tax depends on the ecological qualities of your car.

As a matter of interest, how does the price of gasoline/diesel in Germany compare with France?

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France [yesterday] at the supermart;

95 octane= 1 Euro 20centimes per litre
Diesel= 95 centimes per litre

No road tax for non-commercial vehicles.

As to electrical consumption here, consider the lilies of the field.....

Alan


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Hmm... I make that about 82 pence for unleaded at the current exchange rate; still a little cheaper than Britain.

Has the tax on gazole increased in recent years in France? Last time I was there diesel was quite a lot cheaper than gasoline. It looks as though the differential has narrowed somewhat.

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