How would you clamp meter a ring main ??

[Collectors]

One thing i like on these so called MCB's is every item on the list they do, can be on or off. So if you want to use the meter part & the time switch to lets say control lighting for security, then that's all you use. The rest can be left switched off. You only dial in what you want. & at around £10 each its not bad.

 

[mikehammer69]

They’d have some specific uses for sure

Controlling specific circuits subject to their rating which cant be relied upon . If they say 16A you still wouldn’t be switching an immersion direct with them

Definitely not a road you want to go down having a multifunction gadget per circuit

Domestic circuits in the main should be normally energised

 

[SimonH2]

Yes they appear to be another daft gadget imo for the reasons i outlined below

I can see they have their uses.

Personally I wouldn't use them unless the protocols were documented (or reverse engineered by someone smarter them I am) so they could be quarantined on their own network and talk only to software running on my own server. Doing that, wouldn't be too hard to setup multiple registers for different tariff rates.

Except for the modular load monitoring which is a better practice than the clamping of wires in board etc

Adding extra devices, extra box, lots of extra connections.
Vs. Slipping a toroid over each metered circuit. If your pedantic about regs, still add an extra box, but don't need any extra connections.
Either can be as accurate (or otherwise) as the measuring system supports. Many can do true power measurement by having a voltage/phase input. One of the "round tuit" projects on my list was a 16 channel monitor design I came across a while ago - true & reactive power, power factor, voltage, current, all high accuracy with a dedicated measurement chip.

 

[Collectors]

They’d have some specific uses for sure

Controlling specific circuits subject to their rating which cant be relied upon . If they say 16A you still wouldn’t be switching an immersion direct with them

Definitely not a road you want to go down having a multifunction gadget per circuit

Domestic circuits in the main should be normally energised

They are rated at 1-63A & you dial in via an app what Amperage you want them to trip at, so i would trust them with an emersion at 13A. But i would only fit them after an already fitted RCBO board with correct fusing. So i assume they could be left set at 63A as the RCBO would be the safety part of the circuit .

 

[mikehammer69]

They are rated at 1-63A & you dial in via an app what Amperage you want them to trip at, so i would trust them with an emersion at 13A. But i would only fit them after an already fitted RCBO board with correct fusing. So i assume they could be left set at 63A as the RCBO would be the safety part of the circuit .

They're not in any way a replacement for an MCB

The overcurent shut-off feature they mention would probably have some specific uses

As for their claimed 63A rating on a gadget marked AliExpress

 

[Collectors]

They're not in any way a replacement for an MCB

The overcurent shut-off feature they mention would probably have some specific uses

As for their claimed 63A rating on a gadget marked AliExpress

Very true & that's partly why the RCBO board would stay in place. Someone should have ago at the Chinese as they have a lot of misleading information on selling their products. IE: Why advertise a 13A adapter that you can plug 20A/4.5kw into. Personally i would only plug 3kw into a UK socket for a short period of time & only 2kw max for longer periods. It might be why many appliances are nearer 2kw these days.

 

[ebee]

Reminds me a bit of some of the HiFi stuff that was advertised as so many watts of power and plugged into a 13A socket, hmm , that added up all the different quoted power outputs from certain parts in certain modes and added up as somewhere around the power which could not be used all at the same time.

A bit like a certain athlete can jump two feet, can jump 5 feet, can jump ten feet, can jump 12 feet (cos he is capable of jumping about 14 feet) so the add all of that up and says he can jump 29 feet and more!.
Yes OK then ???

 

[securespark]

The old YM off Princess Parkway in Manchester (Montgomery House), now student halls, used to have one 2A 546 socket in each room.

Didn't stop everyone putting a 2A plug on a 4 way 13A extension lead, though!

Don't remember any outages. The foundation stone was laid in 1946 and the place was opened in 1950 by FM Montgomery, so old wiring.

 

[SUNRAY]

The old YM off Princess Parkway in Manchester (Montgomery House), now student halls, used to have one 2A 546 socket in each room.

Didn't stop everyone putting a 2A plug on a 4 way 13A extension lead, though!

Don't remember any outages. The foundation stone was laid in 1946 and the place was opened in 1950 by FM Montgomery, so old wiring.

The accommodation blocks at Bletchley park when used by BT training had 2 * 2A socket, one by each bed for a table lamp, apparently they were fed with a 2A fuse. bearing in mind the courses were commonly 4 weeks I used to take enough project work to see me through, so yes of course it was a 4 way. What I found out was each fuse covered a wing of up to 16 rooms so potentially 32 * 25W bulbs = 800W = 3.3A. Several times simply turning my soldering iron on blew it. It didn't take me long to realise the main lighting circuit (2 * ceiling light - brighter than the table lamps, plus tubular over the basin plus shaver socket plus corridor lights) had to be on a bigger fuse and dobbed a cable into shaver socket. One of my room mates even used his 1200W hairdrier on my 4 way result.

Unfortunately I had to remove it every day as it was the sort of thing housekeeping looked out for, along with the road cones, traffic signs and other miscellaneous items collected by lads out on the barley water.

And yes it was cotton/rubber 3/0.029" wiring

 

[securespark]

You were far braver than me!

I dared not pull forward the plate in case of the old crumbly crumbly!

I did however find out the communal lighting was MICC cable, so maybe the whole building was?

As far as housekeeping, they were called "The Gestapo" in MH, and they made regular sweeps for any unofficial electrical leads, stashes of alcohol and other stuff (ahem) and to clamp down on rowdy behaviour.

 

[SUNRAY]

You were far braver than me!

I dared not pull forward the plate in case of the old crumbly crumbly!

I did however find out the communal lighting was MICC cable, so maybe the whole building was?

As far as housekeeping, they were called "The Gestapo" in MH, and they made regular sweeps for any unofficial electrical leads, stashes of alcohol and other stuff (ahem) and to clamp down on rowdy behaviour.

This was in the 70's so still fairly fresh.

House keeping would remove electric cables and hand to

"The Gestapo"

Porters who would simply hand it back when requested, however their main job was controlling bored young lads who got up to all sorts of tricks, such as putting minis on the roof.
My claim to fame was making concrete cow pats for the Milton Keynes concrete cows, when we asked if we could scrounge the materials from the maintenance team their initial response was a flat "no" along with slagging off us trouble makers but when we were able to get more words in and explain what we wanted to do they had a good chuckle and made everything available to us. The next day the daily sun had a picture of our handiwork.

 

[securespark]

Concrete cow pats!

In my time, I've driven past those creatures many times, never realised the high jinx going on!

 

[securespark]

From Wikipedia.See last paragraph. But it links the cow pats to Culture Minister Kim Howells, who was in office in the early 2000s. Either it's wrong, or maybe you set a trend which others followed!