Circuits running out of power and high bills

[JohnW2]

They measure power, not "VA", i.e. a purely reactive load will register zero.

Fair enough - if that's the case, then my point becomes even stronger! I'm not sure that meters such as eric postulated have ever existed and, if they did, it must have been a very long time ago.

Kind Regards, John

 

[jonshutt2]

Thanks for all the replies.

We got an electrician round who found the fault was 'luckily' outside, so SSE came to fix the cabling to house.

 

[JohnW2]

We got an electrician round who found the fault was 'luckily' outside, so SSE came to fix the cabling to house.

Thanks for the update. That would explain your 'running out of power' issues, but could not explain high bills (in fact, should have made them a bit lower). Do you still think that the bills have become too high?

Kind Regards, John

 

[jonshutt2]

Hi, looking at the comments previously about the use of convection heaters - it could be correct. But next time I'm over I'll take a look and try and quantify what's on. I may get one of those current meter plug things - or a clamp on current meter.

 

[JohnW2]

Hi, looking at the comments previously about the use of convection heaters - it could be correct. But next time I'm over I'll take a look and try and quantify what's on. I may get one of those current meter plug things - or a clamp on current meter.

Fair enough. Let us know what you discover/decide!

Kind Regards, John

 

[securespark]

Your best bet is to arrange a EICR to be carried out hasty like!

EDIT: Sorry, I was late to the party!

 

[Taylortwocities]

Maplin have a £10 plug in monitor that displays power factor, kilowatt hours used, active watts consumed, apparent power, voltage, amps used and frequency.
Handy for basic indication on a per-appliance basis.

CLICKY

 

[jonshutt2]

Hi, just an update for anyone interested.
Electrician came round, and didn't take long for him to figure out the problem was outside, and called SSE.
They came pretty quick and tracked the problem down a joint at one of the poles leading to the house.

@Taylortwocities - that plug in monitor looks interesting - might get one.

 

[SimonH2]

I argued with a farmer over generator position, he wanted it away from house to keep noise down, I wanted it local so less volt drop and the engine heat could warm the house. At the cost of electric it may be cheaper to local generate and use engine heat to warm house?

Unless you hook up the coolant circuit, then you'll not get a significant amount of heat into the house - at best you'll get a bit of a warm breeze on one wall along with a lot of noise. So if it's a standard genset then putting it well away from the house is a good idea.
If you want to go all out on efficiency then you'd need to hook the engine cooling into (say) a thermal store and only use the rad (if there's one at all) in hot weather when there may be too little thermal load to avoid overheating the store. Some people will also put a heat exchanger in the exhaust which can recover quite a bit of heat as well. With full heat recovery, self-generation can be fairly efficient but I doubt it would ever be more cost effective (especially after allowing for capital costs) than mains.