Future-proofing: should homes have 3-phase?

disposableFish

Might seem a bit overkill right now but our power demands for houses are changing a lot. I'm wondering if 3-phase in homes would be a good idea going forward as in the future we're going to be running everything off electric and will be installing car charging, home heating and water heating systems that could benefit from having it.

From a quick look the cost isn't enormous, especially for a new build (I could be missing something though).

Do people think it'll become the norm?

Millionaire only not

disposableFish wrote: »

Might seem a bit overkill right now but our power demands for houses are changing a lot. I'm wondering if 3-phase in homes would be a good idea going forward as in the future we're going to be running everything off electric and will be installing car charging, home heating and water heating systems that could benefit from having it.

From a quick look the cost isn't enormous, especially for a new build (I could be missing something though).

Do people think it'll become the norm?

Depends very much how near 3 phase power is near u at present!
Should at least cost 7 k upwards no matter how near it is to u for an upgrade , higher ground rent as well, so if u haven’t power demand at moment could end up costing u !
But u have very valid point for charging cars in the future !

drunkmonkey

You could be using a hydrogen boiler to heat your home and fuel your car yet.

CoBo55

Maybe a similar system to what they have in the U.S. high and low voltage, instead have single and three phase to a premises. I think it's a good idea.

disposableFish

Millionaire only not wrote: »

But u have very valid point for charging cars in the future !

I think it'll be part of it because people won't tolerate the kind of charging times allowed for by single phase but...

I think heating will be the bigger issue. The solutions emerging are heat-pump based and single phase is a big limitation. At the moment they're limited to homes that are easy to heat because it's so hard to make/get single phase units with high output.

We may also end up moving to instant ele trip water heating, which would be a non runner at single phase outputs.

disposableFish

CoBo55 wrote: »

Maybe a similar system to what they have in the U.S. high and low voltage, instead have single and three phase to a premises. I think it's a good idea.

How would that help?
It thought their supply was 240single to the house? Would it make such a big difference?

disposableFish

drunkmonkey wrote: »

You could be using a hydrogen boiler to heat your home and fuel your car yet.

Maybe...but I doubt it. For various reasons, I don't see hydrogen being it.

drunkmonkey

disposableFish wrote: »

Maybe...but I doubt it. For various reasons, I don't see hydrogen being it.

I don't see everything running off electricity either especially home heating and if we're to decarbon, hydrogen seems to be a contender.
We're a long way off most cars using electricity either.

disposableFish

drunkmonkey wrote: »

I don't see everything running off electricity either especially home heating and if we're to decarbon, hydrogen seems to be a contender.
We're a long way off most cars using electricity either.

It's not the topics, but I'll bite.

I'm not against it, I just think it's a bad bet.

Partly because A: there are inherently big difficulties with transport and storage that we don't have any bright ideas on. Actually producing hydrogen by electricity is pretty inefficient - because of this almost all hydrogen is produced from methane(about 95%, and we use a lot of hydrogen already - all of the carbon in the methane gets released as CO2). It could be that the relative cost will change but even then it's going to be more efficient to just use the power to just...power stuff.
B: We're investing a lot more on research on batteries and electronics in general and will continue to do so. Research driven by consumer electronics markets (largely phones) has caused huge advances. This is a bit of a happy accident when it comes to cars etc. but it's there and I'll take it.

In general I think the big appeal of hydrogen is that it's so similar to what we do now (put in fuel, thing goes bang, stuff moves/gets hot, job done) but other options are getting adopted fast enough to overcome this inertia.

RE: home heating, things like air-to-water are already taking over, but as I said I think one of the big stumbling blocks is the limitations of single-phase power (a lot of homes just won't be able to reduce demand enough to convert with current options)...which is what I was getting at when I started this.

drunkmonkey wrote: »

We're a long way off most cars using electricity either.

Don't think so, growth is already huge and the big companies are starting to see what way the wind is blowing and are bringing proper options to market.

brightspark

I don't really see installing 3 phase power as practical, the higher voltages involved, dangers to equipment from broken neutrals if not properly maintained, more expensive distribution boards etc., are the main reasons.
There would also need to be 3 phase power meters installed, and there would be the issue of balancing the single phase loads across the phases.

While for a few quick charging may be nice, in reality most cars are parked overnight, with many not needing a full charge each day.

Hydrogen is expensive to make and store, but I would foresee a new generation of batteries being developed similar to the Tesla power wall. A reserve battery for a house unlike a car does not need to be either compact or light so there are other options besides the lithium ion types. With more houses having solar panels it would make more sense to store that power locally than feed it back into the grid.
Smart meters could also mean that these batteries would be charged at off-peak times from the grid (off peak could also mean when the wind turbines are generating more than the grid requires at that time)

Better building methods should lead to houses requiring much less power to heat than currently used too.

Del2005

disposableFish wrote: »

It's not the topics, but I'll bite.

I'm not against it, I just think it's a bad bet.

Partly because A: there are inherently big difficulties with transport and storage that we don't have any bright ideas on. Actually producing hydrogen by electricity is pretty inefficient - because of this almost all hydrogen is produced from methane(about 95%, and we use a lot of hydrogen already - all of the carbon in the methane gets released as CO2). It could be that the relative cost will change but even then it's going to be more efficient to just use the power to just...power stuff.
B: We're investing a lot more on research on batteries and electronics in general and will continue to do so. Research driven by consumer electronics markets (largely phones) has caused huge advances. This is a bit of a happy accident when it comes to cars etc. but it's there and I'll take it.

In general I think the big appeal of hydrogen is that it's so similar to what we do now (put in fuel, thing goes bang, stuff moves/gets hot, job done) but other options are getting adopted fast enough to overcome this inertia.

RE: home heating, things like air-to-water are already taking over, but as I said I think one of the big stumbling blocks is the limitations of single-phase power (a lot of homes just won't be able to reduce demand enough to convert with current options)...which is what I was getting at when I started this.

Don't think so, growth is already huge and the big companies are starting to see what way the wind is blowing and are bringing proper options to market.

Modern homes don't need as much heating so giving them 3 phase isn't necessary. It's older homes that could benefit but the cost of rewiring the network would be astronomical, its costing us €3bn++ to run some fibre to the 0.5m homes can you imagine how much it'd cost for the whole country to be rewired for 3 phase.

Antenna

disposableFish wrote: »

How would that help?
It thought their supply was 240single to the house? Would it make such a big difference?

US houses usually have two 120V phases in antiphase.

Large fixed applicances (such as electric cooker) use both (240V)

Otherwise sockets lighting etc uses one phase or the other (120V)


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-phase_electric_power

Dardania

To OP's point: I agree with the problem, but not the solution.
I too feel there will be power constraints in future with heat pumps, and car charging. Especially if two car households want to simultaneously charge.

But the solution of putting 3 phase to each house might be too difficult - I'd be more in favour of widespread use of the enhanced domestic supply (at 16kVA? Or was it 80A?) over single phase. Simpler to implement, and on a macros basis achieves much the same goal.

Bruthal

Yea there is no technical reason that single phase supplies cant be increased.

Having 3 phase supplies would make balancing happen more evenly automatically as more loads are added to households, but at substation level, the loadings per phase will be the same either way on average.

Clearly 3 phase supplies are better for 3 phase motor based items of course.