K
Kenny.s
Hi, first post so please accept my apologies for going straight in with a question.
Sorry if this is a bit long winded but I thought knowing the full story may help.
We bought an old semi detached cottage about 7 months ago which is at the end of a 320m overhead LV supply. Initially this consisted of a single phase 30mm open conductor for about 260m dropping to 16mm between the 2nd last pole and our neighbours property. All told there are 5 properties fed from this supply.
Needless to say the volt drop we experienced was quite significant.
A call to the DNO resulted in 3 engineers coming out to check the lines etc no issues found other than the 25kva Tx had a 200A fuse in it!
Voltage monitors where fitted and confirmed that the supply was way below what it should be. I got a letter and a phone call to say that it would be upgraded. At that time I expressed an interest in having a 3phase connection to my planned workshop and if needs be I would be happy to contribute towards the cost of further upgrading the equipment to ensure I got a good solid supply. I was assured by the engineer assigned to the job that I would be able to have a 3 phase connection on completion of the upgrade but I would obviously have to pay for the new service cable etc.
Fast forward a few weeks and they had scheduled the upgrade, I was quite impressed by how quickly they had acted on this and had hoped it would be a straightforward job.
They installed a 3phase 50kva Tx and 50mm ABC, dropping to 35mm for the last span. The first 3 houses share a phase, my neighbour has a phase to himself and so do I. I assume they did this because we're the furthest from the TX?
No sooner had they left I applied some load on and low and behold the volt drop was still quite significant.
The resulting phone calls over the next few days revealed that they hadn't done any calculations, the guy in charge had basically taken a guess! By they're own standards 50mm was too small for this job.
Several months passed before they finally arranged to come and put up the 95mm. The volt drop measured at my cutout is now approx 0.31v/A whilst not great its bearable.
I recently sent in the application for the 3 phase connection asking for 42kva as advised by the engineer (now a different guy) I thought this seemed a bit high given its only a 50kva TX but he assured me it would be fine.
Next day I got a call saying that I couldn't have 42 or I would need to pay for a 100kva TX. I said to reduce it to 30 or even 25. I got the quote through yesterday stating I could only have 16kva evenly split across the 3 phases!! That's 2kva less that I'm allocated just now.
It would therefor seem that they have cut this to the bone when the did the upgrade if they can't even give me another 7kva, its almost as though they're trying to claw back some load?
Basically after that big story, what I'm asking is, how do they apply diversity when calculating how big a supply TX needs to be?
Many Thanks,
Kenny.
Sorry if this is a bit long winded but I thought knowing the full story may help.
We bought an old semi detached cottage about 7 months ago which is at the end of a 320m overhead LV supply. Initially this consisted of a single phase 30mm open conductor for about 260m dropping to 16mm between the 2nd last pole and our neighbours property. All told there are 5 properties fed from this supply.
Needless to say the volt drop we experienced was quite significant.
A call to the DNO resulted in 3 engineers coming out to check the lines etc no issues found other than the 25kva Tx had a 200A fuse in it!
Voltage monitors where fitted and confirmed that the supply was way below what it should be. I got a letter and a phone call to say that it would be upgraded. At that time I expressed an interest in having a 3phase connection to my planned workshop and if needs be I would be happy to contribute towards the cost of further upgrading the equipment to ensure I got a good solid supply. I was assured by the engineer assigned to the job that I would be able to have a 3 phase connection on completion of the upgrade but I would obviously have to pay for the new service cable etc.
Fast forward a few weeks and they had scheduled the upgrade, I was quite impressed by how quickly they had acted on this and had hoped it would be a straightforward job.
They installed a 3phase 50kva Tx and 50mm ABC, dropping to 35mm for the last span. The first 3 houses share a phase, my neighbour has a phase to himself and so do I. I assume they did this because we're the furthest from the TX?
No sooner had they left I applied some load on and low and behold the volt drop was still quite significant.
The resulting phone calls over the next few days revealed that they hadn't done any calculations, the guy in charge had basically taken a guess! By they're own standards 50mm was too small for this job.
Several months passed before they finally arranged to come and put up the 95mm. The volt drop measured at my cutout is now approx 0.31v/A whilst not great its bearable.
I recently sent in the application for the 3 phase connection asking for 42kva as advised by the engineer (now a different guy) I thought this seemed a bit high given its only a 50kva TX but he assured me it would be fine.
Next day I got a call saying that I couldn't have 42 or I would need to pay for a 100kva TX. I said to reduce it to 30 or even 25. I got the quote through yesterday stating I could only have 16kva evenly split across the 3 phases!! That's 2kva less that I'm allocated just now.
It would therefor seem that they have cut this to the bone when the did the upgrade if they can't even give me another 7kva, its almost as though they're trying to claw back some load?
Basically after that big story, what I'm asking is, how do they apply diversity when calculating how big a supply TX needs to be?
Many Thanks,
Kenny.