I just found a device called Power Provide from British SCS . It's simply a self-resetting circuit breaker which offers a flat-rate supply.

Current ratings are: 0.5A , 1A, 2.5A and 5A !

Imagine countries where you choose between a small .5A service or a huge 2.5A service.

Makes you think.

They look somewhat like a US device called a "service limiter." They are intended for chronic non-payment cases where the customer may need electric-powered medical appliances to survive.

Developing African countries immediately sprang to mind for such a device, and I see they mention Zimbabwe in their notes.

Let's see: If we go with the "massive" supply of 5A maximum, we can get up to about 28 kW/h per day, but at no more than 1200W load at any time, I think I would find such a supply a little restrictive.

I'm seeing battery banks and inverters here, along with a "smart" charging system!

We have the odd 50 amp service here in very old buildings but it's as low as we go

63A, 80A & then 3 X 63A. We don't do 100A

How could you run on 5 amps? thats like a couple of lightbulbs at most!

I have heard of it in Canada for people who don't pay their power bills. Enough to run the gas furnace motor and one light.
No TV, stereo, microwave, stove, washer, dryer etc.
I think the message is:
Get off welfare, get a job, and pay your bills. The party is over.

In Ireland old age pensioners get an electricity allowance where by the state pays part of their power bill:
All pensioners who are paying their own ESB bill are entitled to this as well as all people over 75 regardless of who they're living with.

Covering the standing charge (metering charge)

and up to 1,800 kWh of electricity per year.

250 units per bill in summer and 350 per bill in winter, in the unlikely event of unused free units they're carried forward.

A similar scheme applies to natural gas / bottled gas
they also get free TV licence and their telephone line rental and a small number of calls paid for per month.

And a winter fuel allowance which can be paid off any heating bill. If the winter is particularly cold that is increased.

Over 65s also get free public transport: bus/rail. The only restriction applied is that they should use city busses during off peak times.

Similar schemes would also apply to some other welfare recepients: disabled, people working as home carers etc etc..

If you're just plain lazy you don't get it though

Do schemes like this operate elsewhere?

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 09-30-2003).]

I remember reading about those benefits for the over 65s in Ireland some years ago and thinking how much better the Irish govt. treats its pensioners than in the U.K.

There is a winter fuel allowance here, but nothing like the level of the fuel allowances in the RoI. The UK govt. recently introduced free TV licenses for those over 75, but there is no telephone allowance.

Bus/train passes are issued by local councils for certain areas, so I think it varies considerably around the country, but again it's nothing like the Irish system where pensioners can travel free from Dublin to Kerry and back.

I remember when I visited Clearwater, Fla. back in 1992 they ran a trolley service completely free-of-charge to everybody within the city limits and to the adjacent islands. (Well, free as in no fare -- Paid for out of city taxes presumably.)

It seems very restrictive to us, but in the case of some developing African country I think we need to look at it from a very different perspective.

Leave out the high-power devices we're used to, and what could they use?

5A would be quite adequate to run half a dozen lights and a radio or TV. So long as everything else isn't running at the same time, it would even be enough for a small low-power kettle, like the 750W types that are sometimes used for caravanning here.

Even in France there are some small old cottages which still have a single-phase 15A supply.

We have it easy though due to demographics the average being about 23 or so.

The scary bit is that when I retire the average will be 60+

In the 1950ies the average kitchen + 1 room apartment had a single 6A circuit @220V. Larger apartments like ours (100m2) had 2 of them. Soemtimes even 4A. Outlets had built-in 1 or 2A fuses prior to WWII. My 1930ies Bonzo Vacuum cleaner consumes 1A @220V. People didn't use that much power back then.

Let's see....

Aside from two old computer units and the icebox, I am, amazingly, not much of an electricity consumer.

I have a few lightbulbs, a couple of TV sets (rarely used). Whatever radio/stereo/recordplayer I'm listening to for a few hours doesn't use much electricity.

I have a washing machine and an electric dryer (small 110-volt portable units). They don't get used much since by the time I FIND the time to do laundry, I have more than the machines can handle and so we go to the coin-operated public laundry.

Until about 1999 or 2000, our flat used to have 30-amp service (two 15-amp fuses). We never blew a fuse because of overloads since we were moved into that place in 1997.

Two dedicated 20-amp 120-volt services for air conditioners were then added (one of thes e is used for our main computer that is running 24/7) and also what mus be a 240-volt 50-amp service that was split into two 20-amp 120-volt outlets (four outlets in one square box) for the kitchen.

This was all new and installed by, I assume, professionals and I wasn't there when they were doing the work either (I also have a job ).

Who uses so much electricity that they need a 200-amp service in their house??? What in blazes do they HAVE???

For households using gas for cooking and heating and with no A/C (i.e. 99% of British homes) I think many people would be surprised with just how small a supply they can manage with.

The biggest power-hog in most homes here nowadays is an electric shower. Even people who already have gas/oil-fired central heating & water systems seem to be opting for these.

I would agree with that, electric heating and cooking appliences suck most of the power. In a typical house, over here anyway electric cooking is pretty popular. Electric heating, on the other hand, is loosing popularity as natural gas is much cheaper and more controllable than storage heating.

However, other kitchen appliences are pretty power hungry too.

Washing machines: ~2.2-3kW
Dryers: up to 3kW
Dishwashers: 2.2-3kW

It's not too unusual to see 1800-2000W vacuum cleaners either.

I get the impression Irish and possibily british supplies and outlets (15A & 16A here) were always planned with the idea of high wattage portable heating and 3kW electric kettles in mind ! We needed our tea!

It's amazing how power consumption has increased so much though:

In 1929 a single 85MW hydro plant was capable of supplying more than enough electricity to power the Rep. of Ireland.

Today we use 82733 MWH per day.

The system peaks at about 5000MW

Not sure if that's high or low for 3.5 million people and close to zero heavy industry users. We only have light industry & IT

Excuse me for quoting myself, but I thought I should clarify that my 99% reference was meant to apply just to A/C, not cooking & heating.

It would actually be quite interesting to know the overall proportions of homes using electric vs. other fuels for cooking and heating in different countries.

In my local area, the choices are also restrained by the fact that we have no mains gas available (despite being only a few miles from Bacton, a major terminal bringing in North Sea gas!).

So for cooking, electric is the natural choice for the majority, although a few people use bottled LPG.

For heating, it's not quite so clear-cut. Wet (radiator) systems are pretty much the norm for British central-heat installations, with oil-fired burners being the natural choice where gas is unavailable.

Electric storage heaters run second-place here, but as you say for Ireland they seem to be losing ground. A few people use wood/coal-burning stoves, which can also be plumbed for hot water and radiators as well.

It's all rather different to 50 years ago, when central-heating was an expensive luxury and many households relied on coal fires and/or individual gas or electric heaters.


Aside from electric ranges, the kitchen has certainly accounted for a lot of the increased modern-day loads, although as you say, the traditional 2 - 3kW British/Irish kettle has been with us a long time!

How many old kitchens had just the single 13 or 15A outlet on the cooker unit available? (Plus maybe another socket hidden behind a cupboard for a fridge.) I certainly remember a lot of places that were still like that in the early 1970s, so even if somebody had other heavy appliances in there, they could only use one at a time.

Again, it would be interesting to see ownership figures, but 30 years ago the washing machine was becoming more commonplace in Britain, but dryers and dishwashers were still relatively unusual. (In fact I don't have a dishwasher myself even now.)

I'd have to say that I don't really use a lot of power either.
I don't own a clothes dryer, because I don't like the idea of wasting power, when a clothesline will do the job just as well.
My house has Air Conditioning and it is real cheap to run, as long as it is used properly.
I also prefer to wash my own dishes in the sink, as opposed to a dishwasher.

The regulations over here now recommend at least 10 outlets (made up of doubles or singles) in a kitchen. Cooker control sockets are now illegal as cooker circuits are typically 32-45A with no RCD. Not ideal for a toaster

Our 1960's kitchen in a pretty standard 3 bed house had 4 sockets over the counter tops (2 doubles) which were very unintelligently tiled into the wall and grouted! (13A)

Under the counter they were all radial circuits feeding 16 amp outlets for the washer/dryer (and later the dishwasher). 1 X 13A for the fridge.

And there was a recessed shuko outlet on the cooker itself (Siemens). You removed a cover which looked like a blank control knob. It was located to the side towards the back. This was used for the kettle for some reason!


However, if you look at my grandmothers kitchen it had 1 schuko outlet (in the Republic) and in the UK my other granny had 1 x 15 outlet.

Despite this they had a lot of kitchen appliences but just swapped them in and out of the single socket as needed.

The fridge had its own dedicated socket in both cases and in my Irish grandmother's case the ancient valve radio was also connected to a dedicated supply via a plug that fitted into a BC light bulb holder which was located on the wall beside the radio. This radio spent about 50 years tuned permanently to "Radio Eireann" (RTE Radio 1 on MW)

djk,

just for comparison: Sweden has just under nine million inhabitants and the load peaks at 27 GW. Electricity accounts for 25% of total energy usage. (150 TWh/year versus 600 TWh/year)

Typical kitchen here used to have about 2 outlets, at least one of them usually upgraded to Schuko by pulling a ground wire to the water line closest by. For example, when we moved into our current apartment we found: 1 Schuko socket next to the door (single gang box with a horrendously expensive switch/receptacle device, or to be honest no box at all, just a hole in the wall, outlet was partially wired with 0.75mm2 zip cord wrapped in cloth tape, no ground at all) and a dedicated Schuko socket for the fridge, located inside a built-in closet (door had been removed). The wiring of said socket had a certain finesse, the installer managed to hook up the wires ensuring _no_ wire had the right color. Yellow/green phase, black neutral and blue ground. No idea how dumb you have to be to do that. Hardly any old apartment here in Vienna has more than 25A single phase, often only 20A. The services don't get upgraded, because more than 25A would require larger Diazed III fuses that usually don't fit the old enclosures. Besides, if a house with 8 apartments only has 60A per phase one apartment can hardly get more than the old 20A. If there's an electric range there's the possibility of a 25A 3ph service, but that's the absolute maximum for old houses. We've got our 200m2 apartment split over 2 services, 1x 20A 1ph and 1x 25A 1ph. About half the apartments here have 3ph for better load distribution (as far as I know there are 2 electric ranges and 2 apartments w/ 3ph and no electric range).

Oh dear.... I've seen that far too many times here as well. It's almost impossible to remove a socket without pulling off at least two tiles.

Was that from Tullamore? That transmitter has sure been around a long time! Just about every old British-made radio (in the days when they put transmitter names on the dial) had it marked as either Eireann or Athlone.

Tullamore can be received easily way over here in East Anglia, although with some Continental interference at night. It's perfectly listenable during the day though (567kHz for anyone who wants to try it).

This puts me in mind of my grandparents. They had an old B&W 405-line-only TV at their house in London right up until 1978. My grandmother would adjust the volume, and turn the channel selector to 1 for BBC and 9 for ITA, but she wouldn't touch anything else! Even switching on and off was done from the wall outlet rather than using the switch on the set.

Not Schuko, of course, but I still find sockets and light switches here wired with 0.75 (or even 0.5mm!) cord, not to mention devices just screwed into the wall with no mounting box.

Paul:

RTE Radio 1 (formerly Radio Eireann) has been on the same frequency since the 1926 originally it broadcast from 3 sites: Dublin, Cork and Athlone (80kW in 1932).

Athlone was replaced by a 500kW station at tullamore, Co. Offaly in the 60s. and smaller stations still broadcast RTE Radio one on MW in Cork and Dublin.

2FM, RTE's national music station's also broadcast on MW from a refurbished transmitter at athlone. I seriously doubt 2FM on MW has all that many listeners. It would make a lot more sense to use it for a talk service.

RTE Radio One can be found on 567kHz
and 2FM on 612kHz (lower power)

RTE Radio went over to FM in the 1960s They broadcast 4 stations today:
Radio 1 (Talk mostly)
2FM (90-92FM) (A bit like BBC Radio 1)
Lyric FM (97-98FM) (Classical music and arts programming)
R na G (Irish language programming)

RTE also own the transmitter that broadcast "Long Wave Radio Atlantic 252". It was actually owned and operated by RTE in conjunction with RTL.

That transmitter is now being used to relay RTE Radio One in a kinda world-service version for north west europe.

I've picked it up loud and clear in Spain.
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On another point, I have never really found any undersized cables used here in domestic wiring. We never really had any circuits that didn't supply 16 amps. The small BS546 plugs were very rare and only the 15amp ones are normally seen.
And full grounded schuko has been in use for a long long time almost exclusively on 16 amp circuits (even the very old sockets)

In the old days the ESB had a lot of inspection powers that are now in the hands of local athorities etc.. They ran quite a tight ship and enforced high standards.
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On the tiling in sockets point.

It would be great if a socket could be tiled in.. e.g. if it had a tile shaped frame and a removable faceplate so that you could grout up to the frame and still get access to the socket.

Oh.... I didn't realize that they moved sites.

I'd always thought that the transmitter site was actually Tullamore, but that it was often called Athlone, this being the well known town not too far away!

The 252 LW transmitter is absolutely huge. I have no idea what the output on it is but I know it's enough to have caused local residents to protest strongly.

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On the undersized cabling issue. I know of at least one installation in England where a friend of mine noticed that when he plugged in the vacuum cleaner in the bedrooms the power failed at the socket. On further investigation she found that the previous owner had simply replaced the old 2 and 5Amp outlets with 13 Amp ! At least he hadn't bypassed the old fuses though.

I've seen 13A sockets spurred from a 5A lighting circuit a few times.

The typical time it comes to light is during a room rearrangement, like the one I found a while back where a socket in a teenage girl's bedroom which had previously only run a bedside light was now "just right" for her hairdryer.

There was a time in the US when a 30-amp 120-volt 2-wire or 120/240-volt 3-wire service was more than adequate, particularly with gas heating. Air conditioners and resistance heat starting in the 1950s changed all that. In place from before the 1950s, probably about 25% of original 30-amp services are still doing fine.

I like the power hook-up pole for the trailer. Is that individual open wires on the service drop to it and just 120V?

Paul, I’m fairly certain you’re right about it being 120V. The image is from the US Library of Congress; no doubt during the days of promoting “electricity and progress for everyone.” The drop wires are probably “weatherproof wire” which had a thin but tough coat of rubber. US utility practices differentiate them as “covered” but not officially “insulated.”




[This message has been edited by Bjarney (edited 10-07-2003).]