Pressure to have ony single phase

[Mol2]

Currently self building.

When I requested a 3 phase supply National Grid seemed to exert a huge amount of pressure to persuade me to have a single phase supply.

Wanting me to say which heat pump & aircon units & car charger I would be fitting. Given the hob is capable for drawing 48A at full chat it's pretty clear 80A would be marginal. Add to that my hobby is working on classic cars some of the kit I will instal will be 3 phase anyway I found the rigmarole of justifying my choice irksome (ruder words could be substituted).

"But Sir we instal a 3 phase cable in case you need it." They even sent someone out to persuade me otherwise.  Finally agreed that they would give me 3 phase.

The cable was installed and the crew told my builder when they ran the cable in that they have identified a fault somewhere up the road and currently all the properties are on a single phase so only one phase of the 3 was live.

 

Meter installation was this am (a good few weeks after the cable instal) - engineer from Octopus arrived and when I mentioned the line fault he said he was not permitted to fit the 3 phase meter and would fit a temporary meter.

 

Called National Grid to say I wasn't happy that the instal was not the one I was expecting because of a known fault that they hadn't rectified. Was told that they had plans to rectify it before the end of the year. Apparently they require permits etc to dig up the road. (Not sure that's the case to rectify a fault rather than lay new cables to new properties) When I asked how long they had known about the fault they were evasive! 

 

Not only that they started to try and persuade my I didn't need 3 phase.

 

I appreciate the cable fault is one thing but has anyone else had the hard sell? Or were they just trying to avoid spending on fixing the cable & I just happened to be the first to request 3 phase on the run of houses?

 

Andy

[Stu789]

I've had the opposite experience - NG suggested 3 phase from the off even when I'd listed the main loads which would have fitted within 80A 1P.

Given it gives 3x the car charger throughput and 3x the PC export under G98 etc I'm very happy to go with their suggestion.

[Kelvin]

No pressure either way but I still had to provide as much information as I could about appliances, ASHP and any other high loads including model numbers but as it was just a field at the time I just gave them my best guess. 
 

 

[-rick-]

2 hours ago, Mol2 said:

Or were they just trying to avoid spending on fixing the cable & I just happened to be the first to request 3 phase on the run of houses?

 

This sounds like the answer to me. They know they can't charge you to cover the cost of fixing it and know it's going to be expensive to fix so do everything they can to avoid the cost.