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Upgrading home service to 600A
- Thread starter andrewket
- Start date
I have 800 amp service. 600 originally, but since Dominion Power's Schedule EV service has a separate meter, I technically have 800 amps in panels. However, I suspect if I actually tried to draw that much at once, I would brown out the neighborhood. The reality is that I don't come even close and the power company budgets something like 35 kW per house in my neighborhood (if I remember properly). It was going to be expensive to hook up my HPWC in my garage anyways, so I asked Dominion Power to do 200 amp instead of 100 amp service for Schedule EV so that I could charge 2 X Tesla HPWC or 3x at reduced power.
dhrivnak
Active Member
Wow I have a 200 amp service with two plug in cars and solar. And our heating is with our all electric heat pump. I have yet to trip a breaker.
Wow again! I have 100 amp service and have a hot tub with electric heating and my Tesla P90D charging as well as two separate Solar City PV systems going into my box and have never blown a breaker either.
Since the utility is paying for the installation, I guess I'd do it, too.
Since the utility is paying for the installation, I guess I'd do it, too.
bollar
Disgruntled Member
flankspeed8
Member
Fascinating! Can you give a ballpark of what this will cost? How did you convince D to get onboard?
If you have the standard wiring, your EV meter is actually a sub meter of your primary. So you don't have 800A service.
I'm about to have a commercial CT cabinet which is five feet wide on the side of my house. The regular meter will be gone.
I did, but that would have all come out of my pocket. The reality is I would have likely been ok with 400A service, but without load shedding we couldn't meet code.
I've got a pool with an electric heat pump (80A including the pumps), a spa that draws 70A, and 3 hybrid HVAC systems with heat pumps. Add that to the normal load for a 5500sqft house and it adds up.
If dominion wasn't covering most of the cost I would have spent more time looking at other options.
Just don't let my wife see the side/front yard.
Boring under the street and replacing the transformer. It's going from 50kVa to 100kVa. Hopefully the voltage won't sag as much under heavy load.
Cottonwood
Roadster#433, Model S#S37
Nice work!
I have 600 Amp service in both of my houses and am happy that I do!
600 Amps * 240 Volts is 115 kVA. Interestingly, in Boulder I share a 50 kVA transformer with 2 other houses and the service works well for all 3 houses. I have tested Boulder by pushing the total load a little over 50 kVA with 3 EV's charging, air conditioners, and the steam shower all on. In Pagosa, I have a 100 kVA transformer all to myself; that is probably overkill, but I'm not complaining.
I have 600 Amp service in both of my houses and am happy that I do!
600 Amps * 240 Volts is 115 kVA. Interestingly, in Boulder I share a 50 kVA transformer with 2 other houses and the service works well for all 3 houses. I have tested Boulder by pushing the total load a little over 50 kVA with 3 EV's charging, air conditioners, and the steam shower all on. In Pagosa, I have a 100 kVA transformer all to myself; that is probably overkill, but I'm not complaining.
I have 400A service on a dedicated 37.5 kVA transformer. I asked the operations director at our co-op what he thought, considering I was going to add an additional 100A for charging Model X via an additional HPWC. He said there's no issue and I have plenty of room for additional loads on the service. My load calcs all work out without an issue - and I don't even have to use the alternate methods.
My service doesn't even bat an eye when loaded with 150A of charging load (S + X) plus a full house worth of stuff.
The biggest issue with a HFH (huge fat house) is the 3 VA per sq ft on the general load - that's 68A for a 5,500 sq ft home, plus your laundry circuits, 2 kitchen small appliance circuits, A/C+heat loads, cooking loads, etc. Even then, though, it's hard to blow past 400 service.
My service doesn't even bat an eye when loaded with 150A of charging load (S + X) plus a full house worth of stuff.
The biggest issue with a HFH (huge fat house) is the 3 VA per sq ft on the general load - that's 68A for a 5,500 sq ft home, plus your laundry circuits, 2 kitchen small appliance circuits, A/C+heat loads, cooking loads, etc. Even then, though, it's hard to blow past 400 service.
dhrivnak
Active Member
Wow we have a 200 amp service with 2 plug-in cars and all electric heating. We have yet to trip a breaker. With Solar we nearly net 0
Cottonwood
Roadster#433, Model S#S37
My Pagosa house has 4 60-Amp circuits for Electro Thermal Storage (ETS) heat; that is a 240 Amp starting point. Add a couple of ETS hot water heaters, two steam showers, 4,000 feet of house, a 100-Amp HPWC, 2 50-Amp 14-50's, etc, and it was pretty easy to justify 600 Amps to the local co-op. I guess a conservative engineer just decided that all that deserved a 100 kVA transformer.
The Boulder house just had a very conservative electrician. He was convinced that I needed 800 Amp service. I have forgotten the details of the argument, but it centered around me wanting all outlet circuits to be 20 Amps and wanting many more 20-Amp outlet circuits than code required, along with an extra strong AC system. I showed him that 400 Amps was all that was needed; in the end we compromised on 600 Amp service. 20 years later, I am happy that we did. It allowed me to add a dedicated 200-Amp sub-panel in the garage that is exclusively for EV charging. In the end, it was probably good that I had a conservative electrician during construction 20 years ago; I'd hate to think what he would have recommended, had he known about my EV future... :biggrin:
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Ah yes, the electric heating storage. I never could make those numbers work out, except when we had the propane shortage last year from the storms - but I have a good, annual contracted price for propane in the winter. I can see that - I have all gas appliances.
Cottonwood
Roadster#433, Model S#S37
With aggressive TOU rates from my local co-op, ETS beats propane, but natural gas beats ETS for space heating; because only propane is available at my house, ETS is the winner. It's amazing to store heat energy in almost 2 tons of ceramic brick.
CHG-ON
Still in love after all these miles
Holy cow! I want that! Seriously though, I only have the the one MS and I seem to do fine on 100 AMP, which is way too low. But where, I live, the cost was absurd to upgrade. Much to my surprise, I have had no issues at all.
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