Electricity power upgrade

Andy72mtb

Section62 said:

Andy72mtb said:

I believe it is only 40A fuse, the farm was very dated and at the time of being a working farm it probably had a very low power consumption, the electrician had hoped they may be able to run another live from the pole creating the two 80A supplies but the transformer is the weak link, it was suggested that we should approach our neighbour who shares the line and ask them for a contribution ! not sure we'd be invited for Christmas drinks after that. Great content to your reply thank you.

Yes, I believe that kind of arrangement is common on a lot of farms in remoter areas where levels of yard mechanisation were kept low.  If you aren't running a lot of power-hungry conveyors, augers, mills, grain driers, and workshop machinery, then the additional load from (say) barn lighting isn't that much.

I don't fully understand the technical side of it, but I'm not surprised your electrician's idea is a no-goer. In situations I've been involved in the 230v cables to the building have never been the weak link - I've always assumed because the length used is typically short the electricity companies used a larger CSA cable as standard because the economics worked better that way.  The much much longer links at 11kv were where economies could be made with smaller cables or by using 2-wire 2-phase distribution.

Andy72mtb said:

sadly there's just not enough spare capacity, we will put some solar on the garage eventually, as that's the most suitable roof, but that won't be anywhere near enough, wind is probably too big an investment at present, however we are very exposed and one farm in the valley has one, so planning shouldn't be a problem, no gas it will be oil boiler, it was going to be air source but the winters are too severe for us to be reliant on that type of heating. 

I was going to make a similar suggestion as FaceHead.  A £15k budget is a lot of money towards some form of alternative generation/storage capacity.

Have you gone through the design with the electrician to work out what the high demands are and whether there are alternatives you could explore?

Charging of EV's is going to be one of the major problems faced by people with similar arrangements to yours.  Is that part of your problem, or have you not got as far as that yet?

The EV charger is a problem as it's a big plus point in your cottage listing if you have it, also we have had to install a borehole, as the spring that fed the farm virtually runs dry in summer, we have altered our design , which now effectively makes a total of 3 houses meaning 3 ovens,3 dishwashers, etc so the peak demand could be quite high, we have ditched the air source heat pump which were power hungry, but we are still struggling, a company is going to look at renewable alternatives, but you could look at it 2 ways, £15k gets us the supply we need but the extra cost is going to be added to with higher electric bills, verses a renewable alternative, same capital outlay but free electricity, storage is expensive but with energy prices going up, it definatly has merit 

Section62

Andy72mtb said:

The EV charger is a problem as it's a big plus point in your cottage listing if you have it, also we have had to install a borehole, as the spring that fed the farm virtually runs dry in summer, we have altered our design , which now effectively makes a total of 3 houses meaning 3 ovens,3 dishwashers, etc so the peak demand could be quite high, we have ditched the air source heat pump which were power hungry, but we are still struggling, a company is going to look at renewable alternatives, but you could look at it 2 ways, £15k gets us the supply we need but the extra cost is going to be added to with higher electric bills, verses a renewable alternative, same capital outlay but free electricity, storage is expensive but with energy prices going up, it definatly has merit 

Longer term the EV's could be part of the storage solution, but I'm not sure the technology is yet at a place where that makes sense, and it only really works in an owner/occupier arrangement where adaptation of lifestyle to the energy availability is feasible.

I'm not sure how long you've been living there, but do you have any experience of the reliability of supply?  That's often another factor in remote living if the electricity supply is vulnerable to wind or snow bringing down lines or just tripping them out.  If that is an issue you'd need to make sure any of the renewable/storage options you go for are capable of working wholly off grid.

It isn't ideal for a residential scenario (and I'll say it quietly with COP still in progress) but one medium-term option I wouldn't completely rule out is having some diesel generation (as I mentioned up thread).  Obviously that also places you at the mercy of fuel prices, and integrating a mains-supply and diesel generation is complex (so not cheap) but there might be something on the market adequate for your needs, and if there is, it is likely it would have a decent second-hand value if you decide to upgrade to a 'greener' solution in the future.