Omnibuswoman

This is the Christmas present my husband lovingly made for me, as a permanent reminder of my favourite ever comedy sketch. He taught himself embroidery just so that he could make this!!

I'll just leave this here....

thanks. I’ve had a quick look at the rules and I will need to put in a preliminary application by March 2021, but have until March 2022 to get it installed, which is great!

I can’t find reference to this date online, and had thought it was open until 2022. Can you point me to your source please?

I’ve previously doubled up on underlay, using two layers for an extra springy feel underfoot. Your fitter might be able to do this for you.

It's fair to say I'm feeling pretty chuffed about this, and Mr HWMBO is too! ?

Original customer breakdown of costs.pdf Original plan of proposed new supply.pdf

I found out that WPD should be funding infrastructure upgrades itself, although there is some contention about that as ultimately the cost of upgrading the entire network to allow for future needs in a low carbon economy is well beyond the means of these companies, even though they make significant profits. Clearly this was a case of the company trying to get this past me without me realising that the cost should fall to them and not to me. I wonder how many other customers have been similarly fleeced. Attached are the previous and current plans and cost breakdowns.

This is the email I wrote WPD: Dear [name of WPD staff member], I have been doing a bit of research, and it seems to me that what I am being asked to fund is a local infrastructure upgrade, as well as my own connection. Obviously, as the country moves towards more heat pumps and electric vehicles, the existing infrastructure of 95mm 3c cable, and two 50mm ABC cables just won’t be sufficient for Cemetery Road properties, and it is a matter for WPD’s capital infrastructure budget, rather than asking individual customers to fund that. I’m aware of the policy principles at play, as follows: 4.2. The minimum scheme is the solution designed solely to provide the capacity needed for the new connection at the lowest overall capital cost. A DNO may design an enhanced scheme,2 but the cost to the customer will not exceed that of the minimum scheme. The customer can also request work in excess of the minimum scheme where it thinks this would be more beneficial. For example, it may decide that a more expensive route to the existing network will receive planning permission more easily and is therefore worth paying for. The customer will need to pay the full cost of this additional work, including the cost of operating and maintaining these additional assets over their lifetime I have also had sight of a recent memorandum from WPD stating: SD5G/5 (Part 1) 29.10.2020 Design Standards: Low Voltage Relating to the Connection of Low Carbon Technology (Electric Vehicle Charge Points and Heat Pumps) with a Capacity < 32A per phase This document details the approach for managing Electric Vehicle (EV) Charge Point and/or Heat Pump (HP) installation notifications and applications for individual or multiple equipment (installed beyond the same point of supply) rated up to 32A per phase onto Western Power Distribution’s (WPD’s) distribution network (low and high voltage). Main Changes The charging methodology for cutout replacement and service cable overlays has been changed. When a service cable is being overlaid due to a low capacity, the cable shall be overlaid with a three phase cable. Impact of Changes Western Power Distribution (WPD) will provide free of charge service upgrade costs for domestic installations (profile 1 or 2) where each item of low carbon technology has a rating < 32A. Taking account of the above, I would welcome hearing from you alternative solutions, such as running a cable directly to my property from the Tx at Drakewalls Mine, for instance. This would remove the necessity to run the cable all the way to the pole on Cemetery Road, dig up the road, install new junctions etc. Kind regards Morgan

Nope. The new proposed works are identical to the previous proposed works, but they are paying for it themselves and only charging me for the works involved in the connection, rather than the local upgrade. I made the argument that they were going to have to upgrade the local area in any event as with petrol and diesel cars being phased out, most properties would require a car charging point to be installed eventually, ditto gas boilers to heat pumps, and therefore they upgrade in supply ought to be a capital cost for WPD, not a personal charge to me. Although no mention was made of that argument in the revised quote, this is exactly that outcome.

Great news - Having obtained the information I needed from a forum similar to this for electrical engineers (The Institute of Engineering and Technology), and having gone back to WPD with a gentle challenge using that information, we now have a new quote for just over £3k, rather than the £14,600 they quoted originally. I am thrilled to bits with this. We learned last week that the planning application next door for the 5 new houses has been turned down as the developer had not done their bat homework properly. Now that the window for doing the bat survey has closed until next year, and the neighbourhood development plan which designates that land as a rural gap will go to referendum in May 2021 (and is likely to be passed), the possibility of the development going ahead has just decreased significantly. Whilst this means we can't piggy-back on the access this would have created for us (which would have been useful), it does mean that we will continue to have lovely green views to the north of us for the time being.

We do have a builder that we were planning to use for the whole thing (subject to cost comparisons), and it looks even more tempting in the context of coordinating trades etc, but you're quite right, things always crop up. The description by the chap who lives on the IoW really resonated with me - he hurt his back doing some lifting and wrote off a weekend. Another weekend written off by bad weather, and evenings constrained by loss of daylight. I'm now fully expecting to start saying 'we'd like to be in by Christmas', without stating which year!

I prefer the first one too, although I'm hard pressed to express precisely why! Very generous room dimensions on both, but perhaps more generous than needed on the second design.

Oh crikey! I've been expecting to begin in the spring and finish by early autumn. Sounds as though I need to have a word with myself!!! ]

That’s amazing @recoveringbuilder Well done! I’m very good at complaining, so maybe that should be option 1, along with a request for a technical meeting to discuss what our AHSP is going to be as per @ProDave

Wow! How come they only charged you a fraction of the original quote? What was it they were asking you for in the first place that they decided wasn't needed? I'm pretty confident that the neighbour will get PP through this time. However it's been delayed since July when the decision should have been made, without any stated reason. The main hiccup for him is that there is a draft Neighbourhood Development Plan going through the statutory process which labels his field as a rural gap between two adjacent villages. If that gets through a referendum (next May) then his field may be excluded from development, or at the very least he would face a significant challenge to getting PP for 5 houses. His field is the last bit of green space before the next village starts, so there's a fairly strong basis for the gap to exist there. I think the planners might be wrestling with the possibility that granting consent now would scupper the NDP's allocated rural gap before it is voted on, which would render the plan pointless in that small regard.

? You're right, that's probably not the strongest argument I could make!! I've just been doing some reading around the issue about ASHPs and flickering lights. @joe90 is right that standard AHSPs conform with the standard IEC 61000-3-2 which sets out the amount of electromagnetic interference from equipment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_61000-3-2. I found a spreadsheet that sets this out and a list of heat pumps and their specifications on a website that the WPD website points to in connection with installing electric car chargers and heat pumps. My reading of these things is limited by lack of knowledge - I guess this is more @Jeremy Harris territory (and likely others who I'm not yet familiar with). I will approach WPD to ask if I can have a conversation with a technical person. I'm not sure if the chap I spoke to was an engineer or technical. He did seem to be able to explain things without hesitation, but that doesn't automatically tell me that he is giving me the whole picture, or that he understands the underlying issues. His answer to several of my questions was "I put the numbers into our ....... (can't think of the word he used, maybe spreadsheet or calculation formula) and this is what it tells me". That's not a terribly technically accomplished response! It doesn't feel, intuitively, that what WPD are proposing is either absolutely necessary, or indeed the most cost effective solution for me. Of course, there's no incentive for them to be cost effective as I have very little choice about who I can get to do this work. No market forces at play here really. It's clearly in their business interests to have me pay to upgrade the local supply, which I'm not willing to do unless it really is the only option. I also can't see how if the cable is three core, two cores go to my neighbours from that cable prior to it arriving at the pole. That would leave one core supplying the pole. If you look very carefully at the plan, the cable on the pole heading up and down the street is two core (50mm2 2C). So where does that come from? Surely not from my 95mm2 3 core cable? If that could be explained, I would be more likely to accept that in order to provide my supply, I need to pay to upgrade the whole thing. Does anybody on this website have that sort of detailed understanding of the electricity supply network? low-carbon-technologies-heat-pump-split-system-database-form.xlsx ENA Heat Pump Database Draft rev17.xlsx

thanks @ProDave and @Reiver. I have two things to work out: 1) Is there any mechanism/entitlement to dispute by which to engage with WPD about their proposal, including their insistence on supplying a guaranteed 15kw rather than 12kw, and; 2) I need to understand how many houses feed off the current three core 95mm2 cable in order to ask that my house is supplied from this cable. The way the chap from WPD explained it (and I paid very close attention to this) is that the current 95mm2 cable supplies the whole street, via the pole opposite our driveway, and that there is insufficient additional supply capacity for my house, hence requiring the upgrade for the whole street (at largely my expense). That is why the upgraded cable runs all the way down to the pole, and also to my plot. If that is not the case, then I have grounds to challenge the proposal that I upgrade that cable. @ProDave as far as I can tell, the cable currently runs from a location about 100 metres to the north of our plot (labelled Drakewalls Mine on the plan above), and turns east part way along that route to run down our driveway and to the road. I've attached a zoomed in plan below showing that junction where the blue cable turns easy and a cable marked in red turns west. In theory (and I have no idea whether this is actually possible), if it is a 3 core cable with one spare core, they could take our supply from the point where the cable turns that corner (just about 30 metres north of our plot) and run it straight down to us - pending wayleave from our friendly neighbour. That would reduce the quote from £14k down to the cost of about 30 metres of trench/cabling plus the new metre box outside our workshop. Finger in the air, maybe £2-3k. I would be very happy with that. How do I find out whether there is capacity in this cable for that? And if there isn't, whether there is capacity in the cable that heads west from the point around 30m north of us.

Thanks all, some really interesting comments. Yes, @recoveringbuilder the chap next door, or rather his developer, are desperate to build those houses. They have submitted three planning applications over 3 years, and it looks as though this time they have overcome all of the previous concerns the planning dept cited to decline the other applications. I think the developer has invested quite a lot up front and wants his returns! I agree that we are basically being charged to upgrade the network. The chap from WPD said that the 70% charge (to us) for the work represents our ‘share’ of the new capacity, with the other 30% being how many new properties they could attach to the upgraded connection in future. I struggle with the maths of that... I also agree with @joe90 that he hadn’t a clue about AHSPs. I suspect he used this in his calculations and that is how come they think they need to upgrade the cabling. I will see if there is a way of getting a second opinion....

Is this represented by the turquoise lines leading off from this cable along our driveway? It certainly looks as though it is feeding two houses, not three...

I explained a few times about our low energy house, but the chap seemed to think that our use would be higher than usual, especially as we are planning to heat the house and hot water with an AHSP. I explained several times that this is a low energy system as it’s a passive house, but he said that AHSPs “make other people’s lights flicker” as they are such heavy users of power. I find that difficult to compute in the context of this being a good option for a super insulated house. I wonder if I should try to speak to someone else...

Thanks ProDave. The chap from WPD told me that the current 95 cable is serving a pole opposite our driveway which provides the whole street. Maybe he wasn’t quite right about that... The new development will be in the field to the north of us, where the replacement cable is to be run through. It may well be a better option for us to wait and see if he gets planning consent, and then to come to an agreement to approach WPD to supply his five and our house, and we pay 1/6th of that cost instead.

Sorry, 300 mm2 (whatever that is??)

UPDATE: I had a call from the WPD chap today and have established that we are required to 70% fund a new 300mm cable to be installed from the main supply down to the pole opposite the end of our driveway. He said that the current 95mm cable will not accommodate our supply in addition to the other houses in the street, and in order to stop everyone else's lights going out, it must be replaced. Hence the large bill. No account is taken of the fact that we are building a low energy house (a passive house) and plan to have the smallest use of energy possible. He said that they are required to supply us with a 15kw supply irrespective of our potential use. I'm now googling 'living off grid'.....?

Provided his planning consent comes through, that sounds like an excellent plan. We weren’t terribly keen on the idea of the 5 houses next door, but still, every cloud...