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The future of residential building electrical installations

Arran Cameron
This is a spin-off from the discussion What is the best way to wire ceiling lights.


What do you think is the future of residential building electrical installations in 20 to 30 years time? Will they in modern and modernised houses be significantly different from what they are today or will they most likely be barely changed from what they are today?


Will consumer demand be a driving force for change or will electricians only make changes from the status quo in order to comply with updated wiring regs?
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    The existing distribution network will probably melt if everyone tries to draw 60 amps, it’s four times what the system is designed to deliver to each house.






    And the rest ! The correct factor will be more like ten times, i.e. 6A is nearer where the network feels the pinch. Luckily we cannot generate anything like enough to actually supply everyone with 60A, so melting the network is not a risk, except in a few places.

    Consider total generation of about 50GW all turning  more or less flat out and supplying 30 million households. If we turn off all shops and industry, all hospitals and all streetlights, we might get to 1.7kW, or about 6 to 7 amps,  per house.

    There really is not an awful lot of slack.

     


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    To upgrade the gas main in the road where I live new plastic pipes were pushed up inside the old metal pipe, holes were only dug to insert joints, so not all the road and drives had trenches dug out in them, only additional holes where there were problems. My drive was untouched.


    To replace the electric cables would require trenches or a lot of nifty work with moles as well as holes to insert joints, it would be a huge amount of work far beyond what is required to replace the gas mains.


    Andy Betteridge.
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    I have read that hot water storage in houses can be used to reduce peak demands but the majority of modern houses are built using gas Combi boilers and a lot of older housing stock has been converted to combi boilers and the old  hot water cylinders taken out. While the removal of gas as a heating source for new homes in 2025 will increase the overall electrical load despite the introduction of higher insulation standards.  While modern houses are reasonably well insulated there is still a lot more that can be done and I believe we should be aiming for a standard approaching Passivhaus. Having seen new houses built with large bits of insulation missing, poor weather proofing  and poor draft proofing I am not convinced that future build standards will necessarily be any better. 


    It appears all these initiatives place the cost burden on the householder with heat pumps, thermal stores and associated control systems being more expensive than a simple gas boiler. Maintenance then becomes an expensive nightmare with manufacturer specific parts being required for everything, why do all main circuit boards cost close to £200?  If you factor in everyone having to buy new super energy efficient intelligent appliances is it really going to be affordable and green? Cutting local CO2 emissions is not a lot of use if we are increasing generation elsewhere to manufacture the appliances, systems and mine the various rare minerals that seem to be needed.

    The on top of this everyone will require electric cars.
    To some extent how we charge for electricity is irrelevant we will somehow end up paying more.
    While I can envisage solutions I am not convinced that there has been sufficient joined up thinking and instead a lot of independent knee jerk policies.  

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    When the house built in the 1930’s two electricity meters were installed, one for lighting and one for sockets. Electricity used for lighting was charged at a lot higher rate than for the sockets, because the cost of supplying electricity just for lighting, particularly on a summers evening, without daytime usage to justify running coal fired steam powered generators 24/7 is ridiculous.



    I was told something slightly different for the reason for having two separate meters for power and lighting. In those days the local "corporation" (local council these days) usually ran both the gas works and the local electricity generator - and they did not wish the market for town gas to greatly disrupted by this new fangled electricity, nor electricity to be out-priced by gas. A gradual transfer of some of the market from electricity to gas would suit them nicely (and protect their existing investments). The trouble was that kWh costs for electricity were naturally higher than for gas, but electric lighting was far more efficient than lighting by gas (even using the old filament lamps we now regard as hopelessly inefficient) - so left to its own devices everyone would use electricity for lighting and gas for everything else, so the market for electricity would never fully develop. So the solution was a higher kWh price for "lighting" electricity (putting it on a par with gas lighting) and use the extra income to subsidise "power" electricity - so encouraging homes and industry to try out things with electric motors as well as heating. (Possibly also using the domestic market to subsidise industrial supplies too).


    Of course that left a legacy of separate "lighting" and "power" circuits that we still have mention of in the regs today, not to mention different plug/sockets intended for power and lighting (which we've almost got rid of).


       - Andy.
  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    so encouraging homes and industry to try out things with electric motors as well as heating. 


    Hence the old Area Boards having showrooms to demonstrate cookers and offer them on finance to encourage daytime use.....


    And the White meter for night usage, all to try and reduce the evening demand and the amount of "spinning reserve" that was necessary to cater (sorry, couldn't resist pun) for the evening demand.


    Regards


    BOD
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    AJJewsbury:




    When the house built in the 1930’s two electricity meters were installed, one for lighting and one for sockets. Electricity used for lighting was charged at a lot higher rate than for the sockets, because the cost of supplying electricity just for lighting, particularly on a summers evening, without daytime usage to justify running coal fired steam powered generators 24/7 is ridiculous.



    I was told something slightly different for the reason for having two separate meters for power and lighting. In those days the local "corporation" (local council these days) usually ran both the gas works and the local electricity generator - and they did not wish the market for town gas to greatly disrupted by this new fangled electricity, nor electricity to be out-priced by gas. A gradual transfer of some of the market from electricity to gas would suit them nicely (and protect their existing investments). The trouble was that kWh costs for electricity were naturally higher than for gas, but electric lighting was far more efficient than lighting by gas (even using the old filament lamps we now regard as hopelessly inefficient) - so left to its own devices everyone would use electricity for lighting and gas for everything else, so the market for electricity would never fully develop. So the solution was a higher kWh price for "lighting" electricity (putting it on a par with gas lighting) and use the extra income to subsidise "power" electricity - so encouraging homes and industry to try out things with electric motors as well as heating. (Possibly also using the domestic market to subsidise industrial supplies too).


    Of course that left a legacy of separate "lighting" and "power" circuits that we still have mention of in the regs today, not to mention different plug/sockets intended for power and lighting (which we've almost got rid of).


    Interesting - makes sense to me! There are still a few remnants of gas lighting in my house, but in those days I doubt that it would have been used for anything else. Coal fires, and coal or wood-fired range would have been normal.


    In rural areas, it would have been straight from oil lamps and coal fires to electric.


    I'd love to know when my house was electrified. The earliest evidence that I have found (under the floorboards) was some 1960s? VIR, which was in excellent condition. It is conceivable that it wasn't until after WWII.

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    Going right off the subject, some years ago I worked on converting offices into flats in what had been Malvern Gentlemen's Club. On the first floor there had been two billiards rooms, the front billiards room had a Ventilated gas light system the rear one had a gaselier a chandelier with gas lights rather than candles. I did some reading about Victorian and Edwardian lighting, apparently many of the old gas lights were left in place as they were stunning features, however electric ignition was installed to them to make them easier to operate.


    Regardless of the precise reasoning, back in the 1930’s many electric suppliers installed two meters, one for lighting and one for power and charged different tariffs on each of them with lighting being charged at a higher rate.


    Some people only had a lighting circuit, my Dad lived in such a house when he was a kid, when my granddad managed to buy a mains powered radio it was connected to a light fitting , as was common in those days. I can remember my other grandparents doing that as well as there wasn’t a plug in their front room.


    Andy Betteridge
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    Actually that is relevant. Installing electric ignition to existing gas lights is an example of using new technology to improve the existing systems without replacing them.


    So maybe domestic electrical installations will just stay the same with smart switching to lighting and appliances to accommodate changes to lifestyle, availability of supplies and tariffs.


    Andy Betteridge
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    mapj1:

    And the rest ! The correct factor will be more like ten times, i.e. 6A is nearer where the network feels the pinch. Luckily we cannot generate anything like enough to actually supply everyone with 60A, so melting the network is not a risk, except in a few places.

    Consider total generation of about 50GW all turning  more or less flat out and supplying 30 million households. If we turn off all shops and industry, all hospitals and all streetlights, we might get to 1.7kW, or about 6 to 7 amps,  per house.

    There really is not an awful lot of slack.




    Are you serious about only 6 to 7A per house? My 60A guaranteed maximum was a very generous figure and based on an assumption that if a house is sucking 70A then chances are that the house next door is sucking significantly less than 60A, so across a town it somewhat balances out.


    If the government proposes to ban new installations of gas boilers and gas stoves as early as 2025 then there certainly isn't enough current capacity in the network for all electric houses at only 7A per house. On top of that, EV charging.



     



     

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    Do you really think that we actually have enough capacity for what use today?

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