Moving services to the kerbside

[Nick1c]

I have seen that a few people have done this and it seems to be very sensible. I particularly like the idea of only paying once for the modifications. Our house has mains water (the meter is outside the house, but close to where we will be building & so will need moving, it could be moved close to the power pole without cutting the pipe I think), electricity (overhead supply from a pole on our land next to the road) and telephone (from the pole owned by the power co.), no gas. Things may be complicated by the fact that the pole also carries overhead power to one neighbour and a phone line to another. The existing pole can't be moved so we will have to dig a trench to them, a total of 60-70m which I plan to get done when the digger is in demolishing the house.

I have looked at MikeSharp01's pics in another thread and have a few questions:

Electricity:

If the meter is moved to a box next to the pole how does the supply get from there to the consumer unit in the house (the plant room will be 15-20m or so from the box)? 

Do you put in a socket next to the meter to act as the supply while building?

We plan on having PV on the roof (budget allowing), although exporting any surplus looks like a non-starter it would be useful to have a charging point for an electric car which we may buy at some point in the future, again I have no idea how to do this.

Phone:

Will our line go directly from the pole into the house via conduit or should there be a box for it?

Water:

We have plastic pipe running from the mains in the road to the meter so hopefully it won't be a huge issue to unearth and re-route it. My main concern about the water is maximising the flow rate, but as I understand it this is determined by the narrowest part of the run. If this is the case I assume the pipe leaving the meter should be the same size as the one on the way in, if the flow is still inadequate is it possible to upgrade the pipe from the mains to the meter [and is it an expensive option]?

 

Thanks

 

Nick

 

[ProDave]

This is mine.  I used 2 meter boxes side by side because I wanted to accommodate more stuff.

 

Basically the left hand  box is "theirs" for the supply head and meter, and the right hand box is "mine"

 

In the right hand box the consumer unit feeds the outdoor socket, the static caravan, and a shed. The switch fuses at the bottom feed to the house.

 

If all you want is the meter and a feed tot he house, you can get away with a single meter box and just put the switch fuse over to the bottom right

[Nick1c]

Thanks Dave, I imagine that we will need a supply to the house [possibly including an ASHP], a supply to a shed, an outside socket and 2 car charging points, one from the mains & one from PV panels on the house [no idea if these can be combined]. At the moment we have E7 & two supplies [as per other thread], the general opinion seemed to be that this was some sort of anomaly, possibly related to the old night store system & unlikely to be needed in the future. I have never had E7 or it's equivalent so don't know what is involved, but presumably it would be useful for topping up either something like a sunamp system or car if the PV couldn't manage.Would i need to ask Western Power to keep it or is it easily organised later?

Would I just put conduit in for the phone line from the pole to under the box & then with the power cables into the house?

 

Thanks

Nick

[Jeremy Harris]

Car charge points all run from the mains supply, none run direct from PV panel DC, so that makes the wiring simpler.  Both our charge points run from the external consumer unit.  If you want to use a Zappi variable rate charge point, then worth looking at how far away from the meter box it's going to be, as I believe that the sensor cable for the variable charge rate sensing can only run for a limited distance, as can the wireless link, if you use that option.  Also worth running the cables for this in a duct, as I think it's likely that things will change as charge points evolve.

[Nick1c]

Does this mean that you have to go from the panels to a battery to a/c to the car battery if you want to generate your own power for a car? - It doesn't sound very efficient!

[Jeremy Harris]

30 minutes ago, Nick1c said:

Does this mean that you have to go from the panels to a battery to a/c to the car battery if you want to generate your own power for a car? - It doesn't sound very efficient!

 

 

No need for a battery, as all domestic car chargers run on AC, not DC, so have to run from a mains supply.  There's  a very big mismatch between the variable DC voltage from a PV system and the demanding controlled voltage charge requirement for a typical EV or PHEV battery, so even with DC charging there is still a need to have a DC to DC converter in the car to control the charge, which will be just as inefficient as an AC to DC converter.

 

Taking my car as an example, the battery voltage is around 350 VDC, whereas the string voltage of our PV system varies from around 300 VDC to around 380 VDC, with this voltage varying a lot from minute to minute.  The PV inverter regulates this varying DC voltage to 230 VAC, and if the inverter didn't do this regulation then the car charger would need to do a similar regulation job, with similar losses.  In practice the losses are small, as inverter are better than 90% efficient, as are car chargers.