Appliance priority / load control - turn off circuit A if circuit B is in use

[markocosic]

Unless we pay more we will be on a constrained electricity supply - 7 kW 3-phase - which isn't many amps per single phase circuit / appliance and there's a risk that two appliances on a single phase might trip that.

I'd like to have appliance priority such that we can temporarily kill interruptible/resumable loads such as the heat pump / boiling water tap / washing machine / dishwasher etc if big surprise loads like the water pump / oven / hob etc decide to fire up.

 

This prompted the thought:

https://www.quooker.co.uk/229-accessories/powerswitch-31-253-03.html

 

Is there a more permanent / DIN rail-able version? What does one google for?

 

 

The heat pump has a "disable" input for this purpose.

 

The white goods will be chosen to have auto-resume-after-power-loss-without-being-beeping-resetting-or-being-annoying (most euro market white goods already do to be fair). 

 

[Nickfromwales]

11 minutes ago, markocosic said:

What does one google for?

"Load shedding" ( usually via a heavy current changeover relay )  

 

https://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/definition/load-shedding

Edited November 29, 2021 by Nickfromwales

[markocosic]

Shedding - that's the word - thanks!

 

https://www.eibmarkt.com/cgi-bin/eibmarkt.storefront/61a550a2007e80182746ac1e0402060d/Product/View/NS7003526

https://datasheet.eaton.com/datasheet.php?model=248261&locale=en_GB

 

Simple when you know the search keyword. Lots of other goodies to get excited about on that site too. ?

 

https://www.eibmarkt.com/cgi-bin/eibmarkt.storefront/61a550a2007e80182746ac1e0402060d/Product/View/NS0658249

https://datasheet.eaton.com/datasheet.php?model=248847

 

These should be plenty for 16A radial appliance circuits, unless I'm missing something? (biggest thing will be 2 kW heating elements in white goods)

 

 

[TonyT]

Garo- do a priority unit for showers but can be used for any load.

[joth]

In the OP you mentioned 7 kW 3-phase, which is 2.3kW or about 10A per phase. So anything rated at 16A sounds ample (pun intended).

 

 

Gotta admit I have little what's going on here though: how you can have such a low rated 3ph supply? Also I thought load shedding was for grid overload scenarios, and relied on detecting the drop in a.c. frequency, which would be useless for detecting a specific phase is approaching it's 10A limit. 

 

[ProDave]

I have heard of low rated supplies in countries like Spain where if you want a higher rated supply you paid a lot more and it was not necessarilly available anyway.

 

It makes you realise just how good our distribution network is.

 

I would have thought countries like this with low rated supplies would have load shedding devices readily on sale?

[SteamyTea]

4 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I would have thought countries like this with low rated supplies would have load shedding devices readily on sale?

Think they just learn to live with it.  Never seemed to remember it was a problem when we lived in France, think we had a 10A supply, but cant really remember, it was 40 years ago and I was more interested in the neighbour.

[Mike]

2 hours ago, ProDave said:

I have heard of low rated supplies in countries like Spain where if you want a higher rated supply you paid a lot more and it was not necessarilly available anyway.

 

It makes you realise just how good our distribution network is.

 

I would have thought countries like this with low rated supplies would have load shedding devices readily on sale?

FWIW I'll be installing something like the Schneider A9C15907 in France.

 

There's an incentive for doing so - it helps to keep peak demand on the grid down, so transmission costs are reduced and standing charges are lower.