4 ms·

Are you in EU? Recall North America uses 120VAC, so a 400A service is equivalent to 200A in the EU

danachow 5y ago
Most residential electrical service in the US is 200A or well below that. Especially if you have a place with gas heat, hot water, dryer, range you do not need that much. But even with electric appliances and a typical pool heater, 200A is plenty. 400A service in the US is the purview of the very wealthy for their Taj Mahals - which is obviously overrepresented here - but that's a fucking distorted view point if you think it's the norm.
EricE 5y ago
NA Houses still get 240 delivered to them - so yeah, 400A is huge.
jaclaz 5y ago
But 200A in EU is roughly 44-50 kW, a common contract for a flat (here in Italy) is 3 kW, if you have a heat pump and/or conditioner it goes to 4.5 or 9 kW. I have seen (largish) villas with 20 or 25 kW, but everything more than that - like 100 A or so - is definitely beyond common use.
- KptMarchewa 5y ago
  >3 kW So kettle + oven and you blow your fuses?
  - jaclaz 5y ago
    Yep, 3 KW is the "minimum contract" (but still very common for small flats) though there are of course no fuses anymore but a current limiting switch that trips and that can be re-armed, it allows peaks of about 20% more than target, older versions of these switches allowed higher peaks, so when they started replacing it with the new version which is more "strict" many contracts were upgraded to 4.5 KW because the limiter was tripping very often. Traditionally the oven was (only in the last years electic ones have become prevalent/ubiquitous) gas-powered and that electric kettles are not common, so the typical tripping scenario is now electric oven cooking+ironing or (say) iron+dishwasher+washing machine.
jcrawfordor 5y ago
NA uses 120VAC at most loads - but service is 240V split. So 200A service in NA is the same as 200A in the EU. Of course this is confusing since we often talk about 120V loads, e.g. a 15A electric kettle in the US is pretty lame compared to a 15A electric kettle in the UK. The 120V outlets are approximately equally split between the two legs (which you could view as -120 to 0 and 0 to +120), so one way you could view it is that 200A service in NA allows for about 400A of 120V load. But then larger loads are usually across both legs and you have to account for imbalance so it doesn't work out quite that simply. And then there are "weird load" like dryers, which commonly put the heating element across both legs but the drum and blower motors across only one, resulting in some amps on both legs and some more amps on only one of them. And while we're at it commercial buildings often run the lighting across both legs for wire gauge economy. So there's a lot of nuance on the load side. But on the supply side it's all 240V either way (well, kind of, could be 208V in case of a wye supply, but that's not common).

Most residential electrical service in the US is 200A or well below that. Especially if you have a place with gas heat, hot water, dryer, range you do not need that much. But even with electric appliances and a typical pool heater, 200A is plenty. 400A service in the US is the purview of the very wealthy for their Taj Mahals - which is obviously overrepresented here - but that's a fucking distorted view point if you think it's the norm.

EricE 5y ago

NA Houses still get 240 delivered to them - so yeah, 400A is huge.

jaclaz 5y ago

But 200A in EU is roughly 44-50 kW, a common contract for a flat (here in Italy) is 3 kW, if you have a heat pump and/or conditioner it goes to 4.5 or 9 kW. I have seen (largish) villas with 20 or 25 kW, but everything more than that - like 100 A or so - is definitely beyond common use.

KptMarchewa 5y ago
>3 kW So kettle + oven and you blow your fuses?
- jaclaz 5y ago
  Yep, 3 KW is the "minimum contract" (but still very common for small flats) though there are of course no fuses anymore but a current limiting switch that trips and that can be re-armed, it allows peaks of about 20% more than target, older versions of these switches allowed higher peaks, so when they started replacing it with the new version which is more "strict" many contracts were upgraded to 4.5 KW because the limiter was tripping very often. Traditionally the oven was (only in the last years electic ones have become prevalent/ubiquitous) gas-powered and that electric kettles are not common, so the typical tripping scenario is now electric oven cooking+ironing or (say) iron+dishwasher+washing machine.

jcrawfordor 5y ago

NA uses 120VAC at most loads - but service is 240V split. So 200A service in NA is the same as 200A in the EU. Of course this is confusing since we often talk about 120V loads, e.g. a 15A electric kettle in the US is pretty lame compared to a 15A electric kettle in the UK. The 120V outlets are approximately equally split between the two legs (which you could view as -120 to 0 and 0 to +120), so one way you could view it is that 200A service in NA allows for about 400A of 120V load. But then larger loads are usually across both legs and you have to account for imbalance so it doesn't work out quite that simply. And then there are "weird load" like dryers, which commonly put the heating element across both legs but the drum and blower motors across only one, resulting in some amps on both legs and some more amps on only one of them. And while we're at it commercial buildings often run the lighting across both legs for wire gauge economy. So there's a lot of nuance on the load side. But on the supply side it's all 240V either way (well, kind of, could be 208V in case of a wye supply, but that's not common).