Record for most underrated cable?

[ban-all-sheds]

You might be amused to know that the RECs size their substations based on a couple of kilowatts per house on average, (so near me for example a 0.5Mw subs drives ~180 houses with roughly a third on each phase and a further 10 larger buildings with phase supply)
On that basis of less than 10A per supply, each house supply could be wired in 1mm - of course it couldn't really, as the peak load is much higher, but it makes you think a bit when we worry about a 2:1 diversity in the consumer unit.
(I presume the oil in the substation heats up slowly enough that its OK with the TV adverts peak of kettles going on etc.)

Thought y'all might be interested to see what happens when the oil doesn't heat up slowly....

http://www.stupidvideos.com/Default.asp?VideoID=828

BTW - give it time to load, as the throbber (in IE6 at least) doesn't move, so it looks as though nothing is happening.....

 

[stevesey]

hehe some things can be very unintuitive

for example the voltage at the load end of a cable can be higher than the voltage at the source end. can anyone here figure out why?

p.s. fwl i presume you know the answer keep quiet for a bit and let the others have a guess

I assume you mean instantaneuos rather than average?

 

[Jaymack]

I worked as an electrical engineer with a new town development authority, in scotland in the 70's. I also stayed in one of their new, local authority, terraced houses. The main source of heating was a coke fire in the living room, this had a back boiler for hot water to some radiators and a hot water tank in a drying cupboard. A separate circuit was installed to a fused outlet, inside the drying cupboard. This was provision only by the architect, for a 3 kW immersion heater in the hot water tank. The householder could fit an immersion heater if felt necessary. Many did this, including myself for obvious reasons. Unbeknowst to me, my next door neighbour had already done the same but used lamp flex for the connection. This cable eventually gave up the ghost causing a fire in the drying cupboard, the house was gutted, fortunately during the day time. The family: husband, wife and 5 children, were moved to temporary accommodation and eventually moved back after considerable repairs. Inspections were carried out on all dwellings with the same provision and a number of these installations were condemned and made good at the residents cost. No more provisions for immersion heaters were made after that incident.