3 Phase Charging - At Home

godtabh

What is required to get a 3 phase 22kw charger at home? A 7kw seems to be the standard

10-10-20

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058316335/3-phase-charging-at-home

A three-phase installation at the meter cabinet would be the first requirement. That's why 7kW is standard as it works with the vast majority of existing housing stock and ESB configurations. Are you specifically in need of 22kW charging? Care to share why as it would be interesting for us to know what the driving factor is (pardon the pun)? :)

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058316335/3-phase-charging-at-home

Very deep pockets.

Given most EVs can only charge at 11kW on AC, why would you want to?

AndyBoBandy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121184630#Comment_121184630

Exactly, the benefit of going from single phase to 3 phase means an increase from 7kW charging to 11kW charging for the vast majority of EV's (unless in an older Tesla S/X, Zoe or an Ariya).... And doesn't it cost somewhere in the region of €10k to get 3ph installed? not to mention the increased standing charge...

godtabh

Just wondering really.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121184695#Comment_121184695

I thought it was closer to €26 K.

2011

I know some people that already have a 3 phase supply installed in their home. In one case it is a large newish home in Ranelagh with a heat pump. In another case the house is beside a farm yard which has a lot of 3 phase machinery.

antoinolachtnai

There are a load of council houses in Ballyfermot with it. Some homes also three phase behind the cutout, but with only one phase connected.

it doesn’t necessarily cost €10k to connect (though it might). The standing charge stays the same.

kirk.

I know a few residential that got it back in the day for putting an instantaneous electric shower on each phase afair

Some all-electric residential have it locally

It very much depends on what's on the street outside your house. A lot of urban areas are wired for 3 phase, with each house taking one phase + neutral, and they split the load across the phases that way. It would still require running new wiring from your house to the connection point, which might be expensive or might not be depending on the state of ducts, what's overhead and so on.

Rural areas often have low-medium voltage distribution at 10kV or 20kV that was just two wire single phase, with transformers on poles at the scattered houses. Those kinds of locations are extremely expensive to get 3-phase to.

Most of continental Europe (but not all, France is also an exception to this in most installations, other than where there's electric space heating) tends to install 3 phase to anything other than the smallest installations, but their single phase hook ups are usually very low rated compared to ours. They're often limited to about 20 amps. As a result, 3-phase is more widely available.

There are pros and cons to both approaches. Ireland and the UK tend to have opted to avoid bringing 400V into homes where avoidable as the shock hazards were considered serious. With modern RCDs across phases, the risks are a lot lower, but the design principles were more conservative than some places. Other jurisdictions concluded that large single phase connections were riskier for various reasons around overcurrent risks, but I think in both cases when they're done to code, there's really such a vanishingly small risk that it's not even worth discussing. The stats for electric shock deaths and injuries in domestic premises or similar in Ireland and most of Northern Europe are so low that they're up there with being struck by a meteor in terms of risks. Most of our electric shock fatalities (and there are very few) seem to be in construction / contact with the network.

Other than the ESB toying around with All Electric Homes, there wasn't really that much demand for domestic electric heating here as the costs are generally way out of line with gas, oil or other fossil fuels, and until recently our electric grid was mostly supplied by burning fossil fuel anyway, so there wasn't really any significant advantage until lots of wind power started being added, and that's only very recent.

With the advent of heat pumps and EVs and the push to renewables on the grid, there's suddenly an advantage to having 3-phase available, but we have large capacity single phase that most of the continent doesn't, so it's not all that big a deal in many respects.

However, we probably should look at moving towards 3-phase installations in newer homes, particularly for coping with EVs and heat pumps better and it's more in-line with EU-wide practices, so would open up more products to people for home heating / car charging etc.

kirk.

Ya that's right the local town would have 3P 230/400 running down the street , not much work involved in 3P connections , supply quality not always great on those LV lines

Rural if theres only the 2-wire 10/20 KV you're mostly limited to a high-capacity single phase supply

"Gold Shield " was the ESBN brand name for all-electric apartments .They did the design of the installation for the contractor. Plenty of problems with that and neozed fuses and non user-friendly controls .

Yeah, the 'Gold Shield' homes weren't great. Although, they did do some playing around with heat pumps in the 1980s too but it never really went anywhere. I think the technology was a bit expensive and rudimentary at that point.

Not sure why they'd have been using Neozed fuses in the 1980s. It seems like there was a serious reluctance here to use MCBs by some designers in that era here. It's a bit bizarre.

Also, yeah I've seen some of those old storage heating controller - they were absolutely awful!

kirk.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121190411#Comment_121190411

Is 10kv 2-wire gone wasn't sure on that , didn't they double the voltage to 20kv ?

Not too well up on that

L1011

My 1972 all-electric house had single phase, 40A main fuse. I had to wonder if there was any priority switching between the Creda Electricaire 'furnace', the immersion and the cooker as I could see a cold morning blast past 40A easily enough

kirk.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121213792#Comment_121213792

Some rural supplies had as low as 25amp esbn fuse

Never heard of a 40 amp fuse ?

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121213959#Comment_121213959

Was definitely 40A, the mechanical meter (or more specifically, the day meter - the night meter had been removed) was rated for 50A max also

antoinolachtnai

There are a good few supplies knocking around with a nominal MIC of 8 kVA. Usually apartments rather than houses but they’re certainly out there.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121213792#Comment_121213792

Electricaire was a storage heating system - they sold it under various names Creda, Dimplex etc .. not sure why that was the case.

https://www.electricairespares.co.uk/image/data/dimelectricaire.pdf

Seems they had a multiple 1.643kW heaters which ranged from 4 to 9 installed.

6.572kW to 14.787kW

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121225923#Comment_121225923

All ripped out before my time but the height of the cavity, assuming the lower section was for the air inlet at the base, could have been the 7 element in that brochure. Assuming still the same heights from 1972 to whenever that brochure was made (1999-2005 Fiat Punto in it would give an indication)

Boost on that, plus immersion, plus other possible morning demands (kettle, toaster, someone doing a fry on the hob) could have made a 40A fuse very toasty. Also the bathroom and box room had wall heaters, due it to being too complicated to run ducts to them, they would have been at least 1kW each I guess

I'd say if anything they'd have undersized it in the 1970s. People didn't have high expectations of heat and a lot of those all-electric-home systems weren't that warm.

kirk.

The "gold shield" brand had a few different electrical designs

The basic spec was 8kw of night storage and the panel heaters, immersion etc on a single 63 amp neozed fuse

That ran into trouble with overcurrent and they came up with a dodgy workaround