Choosing first mains electricity supplier.

[epsilonGreedy]

Last week Western Power installed a mains cable to a temporary supply box onsite. My next step is to select a supplier.

 

Reading through previous BuildHub supplier threads I have come to the following conclusions:

1. I will need to chose one of the long established big name power suppliers capable of fitting a meter to a new build and ignore the cut price minnows for a few months.
2. Some of the big names charge for fitting a meter.
3. Fitting should be possible within 2 weeks of signing up.
4. I will then need a follow on visit from a conventional qualified electrician of my choosing to fit a 2 or 4 circuit consumer unit within the temp supply box.
5. Suppliers offering too good to believe deals tend to go out of business.
6. While living onsite in a static caravan and building through the winter my consumption could be significant.
7. At this stage there is no point in trying to match tariff deals to the predicted energy demands of my future house because the whole market is volatile and flexible.

 

Have I assessed things correctly?

 

If so I think I will choose a supplier who can fit the meter asap because we are moving into the static in 5 weeks.

 

p.s. I have my MPAN number which is called a "supply number" in the Western Power job completion letter. 

Edited September 29, 2018 by epsilonGreedy

[ProDave]

That's about it.

 

Remember for a site supply and the caravan you should use a TT earth, not any earth the DNO may provide (your electrician should know that)

 

When you come to get the supply moved into the house, it is a clumsy 2 man process. If you are lucky the DNO will move the supply in the morning, and the supply company will come and move the meter in the afternoon.  You probably don't want to be with one of the small suppliers for that move either.

[epsilonGreedy]

56 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Remember for a site supply and the caravan you should use a TT earth, not any earth the DNO may provide (your electrician should know that)

 

 

I will formulate a subtle questions to sound him out on this subject.

 

56 minutes ago, ProDave said:

When you come to get the supply moved into the house, it is a clumsy 2 man process. If you are lucky the DNO will move the supply in the morning, and the supply company will come and move the meter in the afternoon. 

 

 

Think I have struck lucky on this matter. I mentioned to the new supply team I hoped to lift the temp supply box straight into the cavity wall later in the build at which point one guy went back to the local depot and returned with a different slimline meter box. The current plan is to dig out the surplus cable below the supply box, detach the temp box from its wooden legs and lift the whole gubbins into the wall without disrupting the live supply.

 

How many health & safety regs would this contravene?

Edited September 26, 2018 by epsilonGreedy

[joe90]

6 minutes ago, epsilonGreedy said:

Think I have struck lucky on this matter. I mentioned to the new supply team I hoped to lift the temp supply box straight into the cavity wall later in the build at which point one guy returned to the local depot and returned with a different slimline meter box. The current plan is to dig out the surplus cable below the supply box, detach the temp box from its wooden legs and lift the whole gubbins into the wall without disrupting the live supply.

 

This is what I did, put the new supply to a cavity box on a couple of posts near where the back of the garage was going to be (meter in back of garage), when they connected it I told them it where it would eventually go and they left enough cable for it to reach, I built the garage and swung it in myself then got my spark to connect it up (customer side). Result.

[epsilonGreedy]

31 minutes ago, joe90 said:

This is what I did, put the new supply to a cavity box on a couple of posts near where the back of the garage was going to be (meter in back of garage), when they connected it I told them it where it would eventually go and they left enough cable for it to reach, I built the garage and swung it in myself then got my spark to connect it up (customer side). Result.

 

 

Pleased to note you are still alive and posting following your supply relocation. It seems my plan is sound although I am now contemplating how to the keep the static caravan connected as the supply is switched from the temp CU inside the box on stilts to the permanent internal house consumer unit.

 

I have been lucky to get advice from wise old builders early on in my selfbuild, they consider building a house to be simple and instead their creative effort is put into saving a few hundred £ pounds here and there such as the consumer meter box relocation without incurring a bill from a pro electrician ( sorry @ProDave).

 

Another great tip I got last week during the foul drain laying is that my index finger placed under one end of my leveled spirit resting on the drain pipe equates to a 1 in 60 fall.

[jack]

19 minutes ago, epsilonGreedy said:

Pleased to note you are still alive and posting following your supply relocation. It seems my plan is sound...

 

Careful of survivor bias!

[PeterW]

37 minutes ago, epsilonGreedy said:

 

Pleased to note you are still alive and posting following your supply relocation. It seems my plan is sound although I am now contemplating how to the keep the static caravan connected as the supply is switched from the temp CU inside the box on stilts to the permanent internal house consumer unit.

 

I have been lucky to get advice from wise old builders early on in my selfbuild, they consider building a house to be simple and instead their creative effort is put into saving a few hundred £ pounds here and there such as the consumer meter box relocation without incurring a bill from a pro electrician ( sorry @ProDave).

 

Another great tip I got last week during the foul drain laying is that my index finger placed under one end of my leveled spirit resting on the drain pipe equates to a 1 in 60 fall.

 

Van needs to be run in armoured cable to the box - no exceptions. 

 

And moving a live box and the supplier cable that is only affected by the substation breaker is deadly.

 

You have no chances with 6-700 amps, and yes whilst it’s possible I would never suggest an amateur does this - it has the potential to kill.

 

@joe90 is a professional builder with decades of experience. This is not something to mess with and it’s also borderline illegal as you are interfering with the DNO supply side. 

 

Saving £500 or seeing your build through to the end ..?? I know what I would do. 

 

 

 

 

[joe90]

50 minutes ago, epsilonGreedy said:

saving a few hundred £ pounds here and there such as the consumer meter box relocation without incurring a bill from a pro electrician 

 

Just to be clear, I moved the meter housing complete with tails and hockey stick (duct and it’s cables within them) about one metre, I did not touch any cable connections, this was done by my qualified electrician on the customer side of the meter/isolation switch.

Edited September 26, 2018 by joe90

[Jeremy Harris]

58 minutes ago, PeterW said:

 

Van needs to be run in armoured cable to the box - no exceptions. 

 

And moving a live box and the supplier cable that is only affected by the substation breaker is deadly.

 

You have no chances with 6-700 amps, and yes whilst it’s possible I would never suggest an amateur does this - it has the potential to kill.

 

@joe90 is a professional builder with decades of experience. This is not something to mess with and it’s also borderline illegal as you are interfering with the DNO supply side. 

 

Saving £500 or seeing your build through to the end ..?? I know what I would do. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Probably more than 600 to 700 A, but with luck there may be an 800 A fuse further back up the line, although I'd not rely on it - cables will burn back before that fuse blows, if it's there, I've seen it happen a couple of years ago when a pot joint on an LV supply pole failed and caught fire. 

 

Ze will be less than 0.35Ω on the incoming supply, assuming that the new supply will be TN-C-S with a PEN, and will most probably be around 0.2Ω or less, so with a nominal 230 VAC supply (which will probably be closer to 240 VAC) the PFC will almost certainly be over 1 kA, perhaps as much as 1.5 kA.  I recently checked Ze and the PFC for our old house, it was 0.16Ω and the PFC was 1.43 kA, and that's in a rural village with the house some distance from the local substation.

 

Not borderline illegal, either, it's an offence for  for anyone other than the DNO to interfere with cables, the cable termination, or the fuse on the DNO side of the supply.  I accept that people have got away with doing things like this, but that doesn't make it legal to do so.

 

I'll freely admit I've had cause to illegally interfere with the DNO side of a supply before now, as, I would guess, have others who want to get a job done without the delay of waiting for the DNO to come out, but I did so knowing the risks and that I was doing something illegal.

 

To help illustrate the risk, the PPE requirement for a trained DNO person to just remove/change the fuse in their head will be long heavy duty insulated gloves, a full face mask and a flash shield.  Electrical explosions from a short on even a 230 VAC supply at over 1 kA are bloody terrifying.

 

 

[joe90]

In my defence I asked the DNO guys when they installed the temp meter box and they thought it was not a problem. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

[ProDave]

The alternative is as many of us have done, make the meter box a permanent feature on or close to the plot boundary, then you only have to get connected once. Then your electrician connects your cable from there to the house.  All legal and safe.

[Jeremy Harris]

54 minutes ago, joe90 said:

In my defence I asked the DNO guys when they installed the temp meter box and they thought it was not a problem. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

 

I wouldn't be overly worried about what you did, frankly I'd probably have done the same.  The thing is that you know what you're doing, having been in the building trade for decades and seen all this stuff, and I've no doubt the DNO guys had no problem with the circumstances of your relocation of their kit. 

 

It's the same problem as discussing removing the company fuse in order to change a consumer unit where there's no isolator, or meter with a built in one.  A fair few qualified people will take the risk and break the seal and remove the fuse (with some exceptions, there are still some old company heads around that I doubt anyone but someone from the DNO would touch).  Yes, it's breaking the law, but if there is no load on the circuit, you know what you're doing and have the right PPE then it's often the pragmatic solution to trying coordinate things and so get the supply back on as soon as possible.  Few openly talk about it; it's fairly common to just read a reference to Amelie (the seal fairy) when someone's done this, for example.  Everyone who understands the risks involved will understand the reference, without having to actually say it or write it somewhere.

 

As @ProDave says, though, it is a lot easier and safer to just fit the meter box away from the house in the first place.  It's what he and I both did, as it means only one visit from the DNO and supplier and your electrician can do any work needed, from running a temporary site supply to feeding power to the house, or temporary accommodation, without needing to trouble either the DNO or the supplier at all.

[ProDave]

The attitude of DNO's to pulling the service fuse varies a lot. SSE actively encourage electricians to do so.  On one recent CU change I phoned SSE to suggest they update their tails as the new CU has 25mm tails but those between the supply head and the meter were only 16mm.  Their response was to suggest I cut the seals and the meter seal, change the tails, and they would come and re seal.

[Jeremy Harris]

1 hour ago, ProDave said:

The attitude of DNO's to pulling the service fuse varies a lot. SSE actively encourage electricians to do so.  On one recent CU change I phoned SSE to suggest they update their tails as the new CU has 25mm tails but those between the supply head and the meter were only 16mm.  Their response was to suggest I cut the seals and the meter seal, change the tails, and they would come and re seal.

 

Watching the the guys who connected our head up (from SSE), doing the job wearing kit that wouldn't have looked out of place on a rocket launch pad, I wonder how much variation there is from one area to another?

 

Would they have been happy for you to pull the fuse on one of those old cast iron incomers, I wonder?  They are still around, my late Mother's farm has a 3 phase board that looks like it's around 100 years old - I'd not pull one of those fuses, simply because I've no idea what's under the cast iron cover.

 

I often get the feeling that much depends on the personality and experience of the person you talk to at the DNO.  I had a wide range of pretty obstructive responses from different people at SSE over trying to get the cables relocated around our plot, but the guys who turned out to do the job (not the same guys that connected our supply up, on the same day, for some bizarre reason known only to SSE) were great, and did a really quick job, with no hassle at all (pity they couldn't run the local team - they could show their managers a thing or two).

[epsilonGreedy]

5 hours ago, joe90 said:

Just to be clear, I moved the meter housing complete with tails and hockey stick (duct and it’s cables within them) about one metre, I did not touch any cable connections, this was done by my qualified electrician on the customer side of the meter/isolation switch.

 

 

Precisely my plan.

[epsilonGreedy]

5 hours ago, PeterW said:

Van needs to be run in armoured cable to the box - no exceptions. 

 

 

Yup already baked into the plan following advice from @JSHarrisin a thread a few weeks ago. The cable will be buried about 500mm deep along my presently open blockwork footing trenches.

 

In 9 months time once the meter box is relocated into the wall and the house is weather tight, I will call in the original pro electrician to decommission the temp supply CU in this box and route the incoming supply downstream of the meter into the main house permanent CU. At this point the armoured cable supply to caravan will be left dangling externally without a live connection and reconnecting this cable somewhere is the current quandary that I have 9 months to solve. The garage will be water tight and powered up by this stage leaving a 4m gap to the static caravan.

 

My current plan is to install a general purpose workshop style socket in the garage to be used long term for things like hoovering the car and power the caravan for the final few build months from this point.

[epsilonGreedy]

Follow up:

1. I have booked British Gas to do my meter installation.
2. They offered an installation date just 16 days away.
3. No charge for installation.
4. No contract tie-in.
5. Fixed 12 month deal at £0.26 per day plus 15.39p per kwh.

I mentioned 2 people and 12 months occupation in a static caravan at which point the BG computer estimated an annual consumption of 4,395 kwh per year. Seems a bit high to me.

Edited September 29, 2018 by epsilonGreedy

[epsilonGreedy]

On 26/09/2018 at 16:23, JSHarris said:

Not borderline illegal, either, it's an offence for  for anyone other than the DNO to interfere with cables, the cable termination, or the fuse on the DNO side of the supply.

 

 

Are you sure about this? I can find various references to theft of electric, meter bypassing and "abduction" of power supply.

 

My planned relocation of the meter housing into the cavity wall would not involve interfering with a cable termination or the fuse. When the time comes I would expose the buried 1.5m of DNO supply cable as carefully as would an archaeologist uncovering the bones of Queen Boudica. I feel this falls well short of criminal intent or transgression of specific power supply statute law.

[Jeremy Harris]

2 minutes ago, epsilonGreedy said:

 

Are you sure about this? I can find various references to theft of electric, meter bypassing and "abduction" of power supply.

 

My planned relocation of the meter housing into the cavity wall would not involve interfering with a cable termination or the fuse. When the time comes I would expose the buried 1.5m of DNO supply cable as carefully as would an archaeologist uncovering the bones of Queen Boudica. I feel this falls well short of criminal intent or transgression of specific power supply statute law.

 

Yes, I am sure. 

 

It is an offence to interfere with the DNO installation, has been even before the DNOs were created, back when we had electricity boards.  The reasons are primarily related to safety, rather than electricity theft, as the DNOs are not required to follow the same wiring regulations as those that apply to any wiring installation on the consumer side of their connection (BS7671). 

 

For example, they don't size their cables to anything like the requirements in BS7671, the normal concentric incomer will be far less than the 25mm² CSA copper that's required for the meter tails on a typical 100 A domestic supply, and will often be aluminium.  That undersize (by consumer side regulations) bit of concentric cable will be protected by an 800 A fuse, which is significantly higher than the cable current carrying capacity. The rule on the consumer side is that every cable in the installation has to be protected against overload, which means that it must have a fuse or circuit breaker protecting every cable that is rated at less than the maximum current rating of the cable (with ring finals being effectively treated as if they are two cables in parallel, hence the use of a 30 A fuse/32 A circuit breaker to protect cable that will have a BS7671 rating of around 18 to 27 A, depending on installation method).

 

It's not uncommon for an incomer to burn back from a short without the 800 A fuse protecting it rupturing, hence the protective gear that the DNO people wear when doing any work on their side of the supply.

 

The reasoning by the DNO for these different rules is related to the way they rate cables and supplies, which is very different to the ratings in BS7671 that relate to the consumer side of an installation.  Part of their reasoning is the fact that only DNO staff can ever do any work on their side of the supply by law, so they can accept higher risks than any consumer, as they are trained and provided with kit to allow live working, whereas consumers cannot be expected to fully understand the risks of working on any cable that has fairly poor fuse protection.  They also apply their own diversity rules, which is why a substation will normally be rated at between 2 and 3 kVA per household supplied, yet each household may well be fused at 100 A (typically over 23 kVA for the normal UK supply voltage).  They assume that there will never be a case when all households supplied by a substation are consuming their rated supply current at the same time - if they did then their local distribution network would be heavily overloaded.  They apply a similar logic to their cable sizing, plus they allow their cables to run hotter than would be allowable on the consumer side, so they use higher nominal current ratings for a given cable CSA and material.

 

All this means that the risk to life by interfering with anything on the DNO side of the supply is many times greater than it is on the pretty well protected consumer side of the supply.

 

 

[epsilonGreedy]

4 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

Yes, I am sure. 

 

It is an offence to interfere with the DNO installation, has been even before the DNOs were created, back when we had electricity boards.  The reasons are primarily related to safety, rather than electricity theft, as the DNOs are not required to follow the same wiring regulations as those that apply to any wiring installation on the consumer side of their connection (BS7671). 

...

The reasoning by the DNO for these different rules is related to the way they rate cables and supplies, which is very different to the ratings in BS7671 that relate to the consumer side of an installation.  Part of their reasoning is the fact that only DNO staff can ever do any work on their side of the supply by law ... They also apply their own diversity rules

 

 

Case law illustrates that interfering with the DNO side of the supply with intent to steal electricity is an offense.

 

It is debatable whether relocating a whole meter casing two meters with the internal wiring undisturbed constitutes interfering with a supply particularly when this intention has been discussed with the installation team and as multiple examples cited here illustrate it is a fairly common industry practice.

 

I will remain unconvinced unless someone can quote a specific law on the statue book or case law. DNO's can shout about breach of contract but private organizations cannot create their own statutory laws.

[ProDave]

The risk here is the DNO's cable (usually concentric these days) is normally installed in place then terminated.  There is no cable clamp.  So if you pick up a live meter box and start moving it around, you will be putting strain on the connections, and quite probably a rotational strain.  Even if the cable does not fall out and short, there is a serious risk of weakening the clamp force on the connections, leading to overheating later on.

 

And don't even think of mitigating that by breaking the seals to re tighten the live connections.

 

Up here is it something like £90 extra for a "building supply" which then covers the cost of relocating the supply into the house when finished. £90 well spent for safety.

 

The reason I chose the option of making the external meter box on the boundary a permanent thing as it feeds from there to the static caravan and a garden shed. Both are permanent items.  If I had chosen the "building supply" option and later had the meter moved into the house, I would promptly have been running my own supply back out to the 'van and the shed, so it just saved a whole lot of extra work keeping the meter box where it is.

[Jeremy Harris]

12 minutes ago, epsilonGreedy said:

 

Case law illustrates that interfering with the DNO side of the supply with intent to steal electricity is an offense.

 

It is debatable whether relocating a whole meter casing two meters with the internal wiring undisturbed constitutes interfering with a supply particularly when this intention has been discussed with the installation team and as multiple examples cited here illustrate it is a fairly common industry practice.

 

I will remain unconvinced unless someone can quote a specific law on the statue book or case law. DNO's can shout about breach of contract but private organizations cannot create their own statutory laws.

 

It's inherent in the Electricity Supply Regulations, which define the legal responsibilities of the DNO and supplier and make it an offence if those responsibilities are not complied with.  The supply equipment now has two owners.  The incoming cable and cut out are the private property of the DNO, and the meter and the tails supplying it are the private property of the electricity supplier.  As such, the offence is one of interfering with the private property of either the DNO, or the supplier, (although the biggy here is really the DNO, for the reasons that @ProDave has given) in such a way as to render the supply potentially unsafe.  By definition, no one other than the DNO or the supplier (or their authorised  contractors) can have the lawful authority to interfere with the respective property of either the DNO or the supplier, bearing in mind that the DNO and supplier may have a reciprocal agreement that allows either to work on the interface between their equipment.

 

 

[PeterW]

35 minutes ago, epsilonGreedy said:

will remain unconvinced unless someone can quote a specific law on the statue book or case law. DNO's can shout about breach of contract but private organizations cannot create their own statutory laws.

 

 

The statute you require is this :

 

ELECTRICITY ACT 1989

 

creates the following Statutory Instrument by way of Sections 29,30 & 60

 

ELECTRICITY SAFETY, QUALITY AND CONTINUITY REGULATIONS 2002

 

Section 25 refers to the interference of any supplier equipment by someone not authorised by the supplier

 

Section 35 then goes on to list the offences namely :

 

persons not complying with the requirements of regulation 25 Connections to installations or other networks; 

 

Therefore if you tamper with any supplier equipment including any cabling, meters or connectors then you are committing an offence under this act. 

 

The Utilites Act 2000 can also then bring further private prosecution for interference with utility infrastructure. 

 

 

 

[Markblox]

Just to add to the excellent and concise info from ProDave and JS Harris, once beyond the meter tails and subject to the BS7671 wiring regs it isn't a valid argument to say that those regulations are not law,  because a court of law will rule that compliance with the regs will be deemed  to have complied with the law.

[Ed Davies]

12 hours ago, Markblox said:

Just to add to the excellent and concise info from ProDave and JS Harris, once beyond the meter tails and subject to the BS7671 wiring regs it isn't a valid argument to say that those regulations are not law,  because a court of law will rule that compliance with the regs will be deemed  to have complied with the law.

 

This comment is off the main topic here (which is about stuff before the meter tails) and also fails at basic logic; it's not true that ∀A, B: (A => B) => (B => A). Yes, if you comply with BS7671 you'll be deemed to comply with the relevant building regs but it doesn't follow that if you comply with building regs then you must have complied with BS7671. There are other ways to comply with BRs though they'd be hard work to prove and just complying with BS7671 is by far the simplest and easiest solution in almost all cases.