House Amp calculator

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Morning all,

I'm looking for some software that will calculate if the main incoming fuse within the property is large enough to take a full load of all the appliances within the property such as shower, Hob, microwave kettle etc.

Would be ideal to be able to select an appliance within the software rather than having to self locate every KW of every appliance within the property.

Any ideas? thanks in advance.
 
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One can get loggers that record what is used, but individual and group, but in the main we use a lot less than the total of all items, we call it diversity, in the home we use type tested distribution units called consumer units, which have a maximum rating of 125 amp, in fact not seen one over 100 amp, so in real terms you can have 100 amp single phase 200 amp split phase or 300 amp three phase.

And other than when using off-peak power or EV charging in the main homes only get 100 amp single phase.

My house three floors and 5 bedrooms, two kitchens, etc, so large, has a 60 amp supply and the fuse has never blown, this is likely as originally the fuse box was only rated 60 amp.

I have done it, and not sure if it complies, with a very large house I fitted a 160 amp three phase fused isolator with three 100 amp fuses and three consumer units, spread around the home so had the option of using over a 100 amp supply or three phase, it was supplied with a single 100 amp supply, and two years latter we visited and there was not problem with the 100 amp supply, I had worried over nothing.

The problem is you don't want two phases in the same room, no rule against it, but best practice is not to have more than one phase in any room, so to do that the home has to be wired with the idea of using a three phase supply.

So in real terms it hardly matters what is put in a domestic property, we get a 100 amp supply.

Commercial is a different kettle of fish, the main thing is the electrical system is not under the control of an ordinary person, so you don't need to use type tested distribution units.
 
Morning all,

I'm looking for some software that will calculate if the main incoming fuse within the property is large enough to take a full load of all the appliances within the property such as shower, Hob, microwave kettle etc.

Would be ideal to be able to select an appliance within the software rather than having to self locate every KW of every appliance within the property.

Any ideas? thanks in advance.
How could any software possibly know what you might plug in and turn on ? are you going to add up every power tool in the garage just in case you were gong to use them all at the same time?

You need to have a walk round your house with a pen and paper and add up all the big items that could ever be turned on at the same time. It can't be that big of a job.
 
do you have an accurate bill to hand ???
this will give you the average over the bill period

if we assume you pay 15p a kw and use say average 10 amps an hour[2.3kw]
every day will be [2.3x24x15p= £8.28 a day £58 a week £250 pcm
 
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I live in an all electric flat and fitted some energy monitoring kit (OpenEnergy EmonPi ) about this time last year.
My rough estimate by adding up the power ratings of electrical devices in my flat (heating, hot water, oven, hob, kitchen appliances, assorted IT kit, home cinema etc) it ends up near to 25kW or approx 110A at 230V were everything to be on full whack at the same time. My main fuse is 80A and it's never blown in 15 years of living here - it's probably still the original from when the block was built in the 70's.

When i look at the data i logged this past year, the peak logged load was 11kW which occured at 6pm one evening in January (i guess when cooking & heating was on), which equates to ~ 47A. Most of the time during the winter, the peaks were at 6kW, (26A) with the occasional 8kW (~35kW). So, for daily living in a high usage property (nearly 10,000 kWh last year) 80A is plenty. The only thing that might change that would be if i had a 7kW EV charger installed - though my usage figures would seem to indicate that i'd probably get away with it. Just. Esp if i charged overnight when the heating was off.

YMMV
 
My rough estimate by adding up the power ratings of electrical devices in my flat (heating, hot water, oven, hob, kitchen appliances, assorted IT kit, home cinema etc) it ends up near to 25kW or approx 110A at 230V were everything to be on full whack at the same time. My main fuse is 80A and it's never blown in 15 years of living here - it's probably still the original from when the block was built in the 70's. .... When i look at the data i logged this past year, the peak logged load was 11kW which occured at 6pm one evening in January (i guess when cooking & heating was on), which equates to ~ 47A. Most of the time during the winter, the peaks were at 6kW, (26A) with the occasional 8kW (~35kW). So, for daily living in a high usage property (nearly 10,000 kWh last year) 80A is plenty.
You (or someone) might be interested in the below, which I posted here about 18 months ago ...
------------------------------------------------------------
In another thread (click here) , there has been extensive discussion about the estimated ‘maximum demand’ of a domestic electrical installation and the associated concepts of diversity. It has been pointed out in that discussion that real-world ‘maximum demands’ are usually surprisingly low.

To illustrate this, I present here some data relating to the last ~2.5 years (about 1.35 million minutes) of my electrical installation. Although data is captured roughly 5 times per minutes, I have it recorded as averages over each 1-minute period, and it is those 1-minute averages which are presented here.

It has to be said that it is a very atypical domestic property. Although now usually only occupied by two people, it is very large, with a 3 x 80A electricity supply and about 30 final circuits. There are no large electrical cooking appliances (only microwave, fat fryer, bread maker, toaster etc.) and the two electric showers are virtually never used. There is, however, a silly number of refrigeration devices! Something like one third of the total electrical consumption results from nocturnal hot water heating.

The first graph below shows the distribution of the instantaneous (1 minute) total demand, indicating that for the vast majority of periods the total demand is under about 5A. The small peak around 15-16A relates to periods when the 3kW immersion is the main load.

The second graph shows the same data, but in terms of cumulative figures, indicating that some 80% of all minutes have a demand below about 4A, about 92% of all minutes have a demand below about 14A and about 98% of all minutes have a demand below about 20A.

The final three graphs are ‘inverted’ versions of the second, the final two being ‘magnified versions’ which show what happens at the extreme tail (moments of highest demand). These show that only about 1% of minutes have a total demand >24A, and only about 0.01% of minutes (about 1 minute every week) have a demand >32A.

Over all the ~1.35 million minutes observed, the mean total demand was 4.35A and the median 2.97A. The lowest demand was 0.35A and the highest 40.36A. Summarising the number/percentage of minutes with total demands above a certain figure. As can be seen, under 2% of minutes had total demands >20A, and almost none had total demands above 30A. For about half of all minutes, total demand was under 3A.

upload_2019-11-3_19-36-13-png.174784


... and here the graphs ...

upload_2019-11-3_19-37-4-png.174785


upload_2019-11-3_19-37-42-png.174786


upload_2019-11-3_19-38-21-png.174787


upload_2019-11-3_19-39-21-png.174788


upload_2019-11-3_19-40-0-png.174789


As above, I don’t pretend that my house is typical, but these figures give some idea, and will undoubtedly surprise some people.

Kind Regards, John
 
I like the analysis you did there JohnW2 - inspires me to do the same at some point
You're welcome - and, yes, it's quite interesting. My software continues to keep an eye on this, and (~18 months on from the data I posted) it remains the case that my total consumption is over 20A for well under 2% of the time, and over 10A for less than 10% of the time.

Kind Regards, John
 

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