New Electric Supply

[soapstar]

Hey folks,

 

This is my first post! Just started my first self build adventure with permission being granted only last week! I thought it was wise to get my utilities sorted for the site first, in particular the electric supply. I have been in touch with my local supplier (SSE) here in Scotland and they have quoted me to take a supply from an existing transformer (which is luckily close by). The main reason I want to secure my connection so early is I was told that if any other house was to be connected to this transformer it would need upgrading - which I obviously want to avoid!

 

Given we are in the extremely early stages of building I want to ask a question on how we terminate the supply without a house being present on site. I have spoken with the supplier briefly and they say we can take the supply (the full length which has been quoted to connect to the house) right down the boundary of the field 60m, then when it comes to connecting the supply to the house they will move this supply over to the house to which there should be enough length given this quote assumes the house is in place.

 

Now my question is at this early stage we will not be needing electric for at least until next year I would imagine, therefore do we need to terminate this supply into an external cabinet right now or is there anyway for the supply to be terminated and left without being put into a cabinet? It doesn't seem logical to fit a meter at this stage given we wont be needing the supply for good length of time.

 

If anyone has been in a similar situation any advice on what they did would be helpful. I understand the electric company will take us through the process nearer the time however I like to understand exactly what I need to do!

 

Thanks in advance

[Crofter]

Hi, and welcome to the forum- whereabouts are you building?

 

It's common practice to buy or build a small weathertight meter cabinet and attach it to a post. This becomes you temporary supply for the duration of the built, until the house is well enough on to be able to safely move the supply inside.

See if you can get a suitable tariff with low or no daily standing charge, and that will stop the supply from racking up bills whilst you aren't using it.

[IanR]

It may be different in England, but for me Power Networks UK brought a public supply cable to within 30m of the property. This was also across a field and had to go min 1100mm deep due to a "ploughed field" requirement. I was responsible for trench and 125mm ducting, they then pulled the cable.

 

This was left in an open trench, connected to the supply side but terminated with a giant cylindrical connector until I was ready to connect the domestic supply. For this they wanted a meter cabinet fixed ready to take the fuses (3 phase supply). When I was ready they came back and ran the last 30m of domestic supply cable to the meter cabinet and terminated at the fuses.

 

No meter was installed until I contracted a utilities company for the supply, at which point they organised G4S to come in and attach the meter.

[Jeremy Harris]

Welcome,

 

As @Crofter, says, a few of us have opted to fit the meter cabinet in a wall or fence away from the house, so that we could avoid either paying for a temporary site supply on top of the permanent connection, and because in many ways it makes life a bit easier.  We fitted a meter box in a thick timber fence that acts as the screen for our wheelie bins now, and fitted a caravan outdoor consumer unit, with a Commando socket on it, as a temporary site supply.

 

Here in England this was a two stage process.  I had to get the DNO (SSE in our case) to run a cable to the right place, then contracted with a supplier to install the meter and connect it.  @ProDave did much the same, and he's in Scotland too, so may well be able to shed some light on how things work there.

[soapstar]

Thanks guys your replies are very helpful...and quick! We are building in Aberdeenshire. Took over 2 years to get the permission but we won in the end!

 

That's interesting IanR in that you got your main supply terminated until you were ready to connect up to a cabinet, this sounds exactly what I would be after. I will propose this to SSE and see what they say. Although I assume they will charge extra for coming back and connecting to the cabinet. 

 

This self building is a whole new world to me but I look forward to learning! Be prepared for more amateur questions from me on this forum 

 

 

[IanR]

1 minute ago, soapstar said:

That's interesting IanR in that you got your main supply terminated until you were ready to connect up to a cabinet, this sounds exactly what I would be after. I will propose this to SSE and see what they say. Although I assume they will charge extra for coming back and connecting to the cabinet. 

 

No extra charge for me, as it was handled by different teams. One team did the public supply side and transformer, then another to do the domestic connection. There was just a time gap between each stage.

The connection required the two different "teams" due to Power Networks own rules that only allow a max 30m domestic supply cable.

[ProDave]

Hi and welcome to the forum.

 

The procedure is the same here. We are in an SSE area as well. You first order your supply connection from SSE who will connect your supply to the supply head in your meter box (temporary or permanent)  They will then issue you with an MPAN (Meter Point Administration Number) Only when you have that, can you appoint your chosen energy supplier who will separately come and fit your electricity meter.  That can take several weeks.  Speak to SSE about what tariffs they offer, I am sure they still do a no standing charge tariff, which comes at a higher pence per unit, but if you are using nothing or nearly nothing, then it can save you a lot not paying standing charges. Not all energy suppliers will fit a meter, but SSE definitely will so it's usually simpler to just choose them to start with, and later on when you are using more you can switch supplier if you want to.

 

You will need a consumer unit in your meter box with at least one connected and tested circuit, that could be as simple as an outside 16A socket for building work.  The supply company may or may not refuse to fit a meter if you have no consumer unit in the box.

 

As to what box. You can as you suggest fit a temporary box. I have even seen an old kitchen cabiniet with a bit of roofing felt on it used, but I would recommend something a lot better. There will be a charge for them to come and move the supply into the house at a later date.

 

Alternatively you can as already mentioned make your outside meter box a permanent structure and just have the supply connected there and left there. You then supply and install your own cable from the meter box to the house.  We chose this for several reasons but mainly it saved disruption and ground work later on.

 

If you, like us, are near full capacity on your supply, just accept whatever they offer you. We were offered a 12KVA supply which should be adequate, but the reality is that it is the same size cable and the same 100A fuse that everybody else has.  If all the houses drew more than 12KVA at the same time the transformer would get a bit hot and bothered.  I feel certain if we had requested more than 12KVA there would have been a big charge for upgrading the transformer.  Let the next person face that challenge.

 

It's probably worth also talking to Open Reach (that is another challenge) and Scottish Water to get all your services in. Particularly if a road crossing is involved as doing it all in one road crossing is obviously cheaper.

[Ferdinand]

If you have PP you are already a long way down the road.

 

Question: Does fitting a supply constitute Start of Development? And if so are there things in Scotland you need to have in place first?

 

In England you need the self-build Community Infrastructure Levy Exemption in place first.

 

Ferdinand

[RichS]

12 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

In England you need the self-build Community Infrastructure Levy Exemption in place first.

 

Ferdinand

 

IF your local council imposes one.

[ProDave]

10 minutes ago, RichS said:

 

IF your local council imposes one.

I am pretty sure Aberdeenshire don't

[Alexphd1]

Hello fellow shire person. You flew through the planning compared to us! As ProDave says, chase on open reach and the water as they have been more difficult than SSE!

[Stones]

4 hours ago, ProDave said:

Hi and welcome to the forum.

 

The procedure is the same here. We are in an SSE area as well. You first order your supply connection from SSE who will connect your supply to the supply head in your meter box (temporary or permanent)  They will then issue you with an MPAN (Meter Point Administration Number) Only when you have that, can you appoint your chosen energy supplier who will separately come and fit your electricity meter.  That can take several weeks.  Speak to SSE about what tariffs they offer, I am sure they still do a no standing charge tariff, which comes at a higher pence per unit, but if you are using nothing or nearly nothing, then it can save you a lot not paying standing charges. Not all energy suppliers will fit a meter, but SSE definitely will so it's usually simpler to just choose them to start with, and later on when you are using more you can switch supplier if you want to.

 

You will need a consumer unit in your meter box with at least one connected and tested circuit, that could be as simple as an outside 16A socket for building work.  The supply company may or may not refuse to fit a meter if you have no consumer unit in the box.

 

As to what box. You can as you suggest fit a temporary box. I have even seen an old kitchen cabiniet with a bit of roofing felt on it used, but I would recommend something a lot better. There will be a charge for them to come and move the supply into the house at a later date.

 

Alternatively you can as already mentioned make your outside meter box a permanent structure and just have the supply connected there and left there. You then supply and install your own cable from the meter box to the house.  We chose this for several reasons but mainly it saved disruption and ground work later on.

 

 

 

Our connection was exactly as @ProDave describes, with the exception we had our MPAN allocated before the supply connection had even been put in.  That probably has more to do with us living in a small community where everyone talks to each other and there is a lot of give and take.  I was able to push back our supply connection date then bring it back forward without any problem.

 

I had the joiners knock up a temporary weatherproof meter box that sat on our garage slab.  The meter and a temporary CU / board was fitted inside.  Once the garage was built, the box was disassembled and back of the box simply fixed to the internal studwork.  We ran the house supply from the garage to the main CU in the house, to avoid paying for the supply to be moved.

[Russell griffiths]

Ours looks like this. 

[soapstar]

Wow I can tell already this forum is going to be very helpful! Thanks so much for all the help and photos. I think I may take the advice and get in touch with water and open reach very shortly! SSE have been extremely good to deal with, the only problem is me not knowing what im talking about 

 

Can anyone tell me the max distance from the meter to CU/fusebox definitely being 3m? I've come across varying answers. I ask because the position of the supply into our house will need to be determined before knowing the distance of the mains cable which is being connected to the transformer. From what I believe the supply cable which is joined onto the mains cable can be no more than 30m, therefore the length of the mains cable will need to be long enough to allow the supply cable to reach the desired position on the house. We will be looking at an external cabinet on the house I would imagine. In an ideal world the CU would be best suited in the garage in my opinion?

 

Thanks!

[ProDave]

The 3 metre rule is when you have no switch or isolator so the cables are only protected by the suppliers fuse. It's not a wiring regs thing. it's a supply company rule.

 

You can have any length you want if you fit your own switch fuse.

 

Since you like pictures, here is mine. The switch fuse I am talking about is in the right hand box labelled "main" in my case with an 80A fuse in it.

 

[Jeremy Harris]

I was a bit cheeky and stuffed everything into one meter cabinet, something that has been known to cause raised eyebrows with the supplier, but which isn't actually against any rules, as you own the cabinet, not them:

 

 

The 80A fused isolator is at the top right, and feeds a length of 25mm² three core SWA that runs underground and into the house services area, where there is a ten way consumer unit.  The two way consumer unit at the bottom right feeds the outside stuff, including the caravan box underneath that has the 16 A Coommando socket that was used as a temporary site supply.

[Triple07]

Hi @soapstar, we are also building in Aberdeenshire, we had our temporary power supply installed in August and connected in December.

Our SSE guy "Dod" was fantastic, kept me right step by step and did a few site visits. 

We had to upgrade the transformer so it did cost more but didn't have much option, basically we have it into a painted plywood box mounted on a post with our temporary supply and we will move it into house next year when (hopefully) near completion. We did chose to connect the meter and pay a small daily standing charge (£0.11 daily) and lower unit price but left it a couple of months, we do use the supply for the charging batteries, the kettle,  cctv and lighting when the darker nights are here, but there is the option of no daily standing charge but higher unit price. 

Depends what you are doing with the site until you start building and how secure you need to keep it.

Exciting times for you though, congrats on the planning, our planners were...ehm... not the most accommodating ?

[soapstar]

Thanks again guys. The fused isolator route is looking like an option, I will keep this in mind. Thanks for the pictures it helps! Im going to be discussing this with SSE sometime this week.

 

4 hours ago, Triple07 said:

Hi @soapstar, we are also building in Aberdeenshire, we had our temporary power supply installed in August and connected in December.

Our SSE guy "Dod" was fantastic, kept me right step by step and did a few site visits. 

We had to upgrade the transformer so it did cost more but didn't have much option, basically we have it into a painted plywood box mounted on a post with our temporary supply and we will move it into house next year when (hopefully) near completion. We did chose to connect the meter and pay a small daily standing charge (£0.11 daily) and lower unit price but left it a couple of months, we do use the supply for the charging batteries, the kettle,  cctv and lighting when the darker nights are here, but there is the option of no daily standing charge but higher unit price. 

Depends what you are doing with the site until you start building and how secure you need to keep it.

Exciting times for you though, congrats on the planning, our planners were...ehm... not the most accommodating ?

 

Thats unfortunate you had to upgrade the transformer - wouldn't like to ask how much that set you back  Thanks, yes the planning was a compete nightmare. Our situation was slightly unique, I was told it would be near impossible by the planners, consultant, architect....took it all in my own hands and proved them wrong! May know nothing about building a house but i know a lot about the planning 'game' now