Electric problems

[sibelius]

More electrical help needed

4 new houses + sauna and spa area.

We are located 400m from main road in small town. In our small road have brand new electric line but it is only single phase line. ( low pressure???? )

Local electric company installed 4 electric meter 15 (45)A , one for each house and we put under ground cable for feed each houses from electric meters. ( 2x10mm 750V cable for each house )

Houses are 2 bedroom and 2 bathroom each and every house will have 2 or 3 air cons, electric oven, electric hubs, 2 x 5kw water heaters, tv, fridge, computers, etc normal house hold items. Main lightning is with LED lights in all houses.

Now just 2 houses are ready and fully operational and if we use same time many electrical items, then lights and fan + other machines power dropping a lot.

( sometimes LED lightings lost about 30-40% of the power!! + table fans getting slowly too ) and that is NOT good for machines etc!!

For sure when 2 more houses gets a aircons and when sauna area with steam&herbal sauna ( 6kw and scandinavian sauna( 6kw) + swimming pool ( pump etc ), big freezer & fridges will be ready then we need 3 phase electric

In few years plan is to make 4 - 6 houses more in this area.

some questions.

Why electric is going up and down now?? What we can do??? ( does voltage stabilizer helps us )

They said that this area will get high pressure electric next year ( maybe??? ;0)

Do we have big electric meters & cable enough

What is proper size of 3 phase cable from main road to our property, about 400m

How big transformer we should buy

Is it easy to get own electric meter for each houses after 3 phase installed

Some more important things for electric guys have to do

I get so many different ( and crazy answers too !!! ) answers from local sparks that they will make my head spinning!!!!

Thanks for your help

[bankruatsteve]

Not an expert on grid dynamics, but have experience with being a high-end user with low grid supply: you "brown out" you and everyone else on your transformer when you power up and nothing to help unless the PEA supplies more "juice". Suggest you complain (to the PEA) and hope they will do something.

[Crossy]

Four relatively big homes on the end of 400m of single phase feed is asking for problems.

Are you on permanent supply or still on the 'construction' supply? You can tell from your bill, average cost on a permanent supply is about 4 Baht a unit, construction rate is about twice that.

I ask because PEA won't connect a permanent 15/45 to a cable smaller than 16mm² (so your 10mm² cables will have to be replaced, who specified them?).

Is 3-phase available at the other end of the road? I wonder why PEA didn't run 3-phase all the way to the development, unless of course it's still on the construction supply. If 3-phase is available it won't cost the earth to run a second phase from the road (PEA should do) you can then have one house on each of the two phases until a proper solution is found.

For 3-phase and 4 homes, you're looking at at-least 4 x 50mm² copper (70mm² Aluminium) from the road, do you know what size is currently installed for your single phase feed?

Don't start thinking about (expensive) transformers until all other options have been exhausted.

What does the developer have to say about power issues, if more homes are planned he should have considered the cost of a local transformer and factored it into the house prices.

[IMHO]

10mm2 sounds very small - are you sure about that? Assuming 30-40M from meter to the load center, and aluminium 10mm2, it's only going to take a few thousand watts of current draw before the cable loss gets pretty significant.

Other than that, everything that Crossy said +1.