Upgrading home service to 600A

[igotzzoom]

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.

Good to know. I have a 125 amp panel for my townhouse. I also have what seems to be an unused 50-amp ciruit when the unit was primarily electric appliances. I'm almost all-gas now (water heater, HVAC, dryer, stove) so I'm hoping we can tap that circuit for an EVSE when I get my car.

 

[Dbitter1]

Sigh, jealous. I only have 400A service. When I bought my MS, chademo was not out yet, and reality kept me from "reserving" money for a $10K charger that needed 3p 480V service to power it (e.g. "LOL we aren't offering you 3p service to a residence!").

Anxious to try out the 135KW SCs, just for an intermediate fix... wonder where the closest one is to Chicago?

 

[Ulmo]

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.

View attachment 165143

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.View attachment 165144

I wonder what methods are available for load shedding these days if one pays oneself. In the future we are going to wire in some electric vehicle charging connections, so those might have load shedding capabilities in them; and we're also installing a solar system and batteries with inverters, so that should have some software capabilities too. Since we won't be using 600 amps average, just have a lot of connected draws, it makes sense we could manage load to be, say, whatever PG&E + solar + batteries allow without going over or requiring a larger size pole pig, which would get the utility grumpy (or maybe not).

I'm about to have an electrician install something like three 200A panels (two 50 slot + one smaller panel) hopefully, so I want to know the best way to do this pretty soon. I'd rather do it myself, but I'm not sure insurance will cover it.

 

[miimura]

PG&E's policy is that when you install or upgrade service, you have to pay for the wire all the way to the first interconnect in the right-of-way. In my case, on my new house construction, I paid for the 400A main panel, the trenching, conduit, and the wire that went from the meter to the top of the pole at the corner of my property. PG&E upgraded the very old looking 25kVA transformer on the neighbor's pole to a 50kVA unit about 2 weeks after my service was turned on. The other two houses that share the transformer are probably 100A and 200A, but I haven't been nosy enough to look.

The PG&E engineer that I talked to in the planning stage gave me different options about how to connect the service with one or multiple meters. Three is a particular kind of junction box that can be installed before the meters if you have more than one, or you can install a panel that has two meter sockets. I specifically chose one meter because I knew I would be getting solar and at that time there was no way to share solar credits from your main meter to an EV meter. However, PG&E has implemented Net Meter Aggregation, so I believe it can be done now. If I had it to do over, I would install a main panel with two meter sockets (200A + 200A) and a sub-panel in the garage just for EV charging.

 

[Ulmo]

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.

I doubt I could make it work in California coastal regions: we pay a bundle for heating at night, but during peak solar in the day, the temperature outside is comfortable, so Electro Thermo Storage would not work, since to store energy it would have to come on during peak solar (lowest cost electricity) time of day which is already comfortable, causing it to get too hot inside.

 

[Ulmo]

PG&E's policy is that when you install or upgrade service, you have to pay for the wire all the way to the first interconnect in the right-of-way. In my case, on my new house construction, I paid for the 400A main panel, the trenching, conduit, and the wire that went from the meter to the top of the pole at the corner of my property. PG&E upgraded the very old looking 25kVA transformer on the neighbor's pole to a 50kVA unit about 2 weeks after my service was turned on. The other two houses that share the transformer are probably 100A and 200A, but I haven't been nosy enough to look.

The PG&E engineer that I talked to in the planning stage gave me different options about how to connect the service with one or multiple meters. Three is a particular kind of junction box that can be installed before the meters if you have more than one, or you can install a panel that has two meter sockets. I specifically chose one meter because I knew I would be getting solar and at that time there was no way to share solar credits from your main meter to an EV meter. However, PG&E has implemented Net Meter Aggregation, so I believe it can be done now. If I had it to do over, I would install a main panel with two meter sockets (200A + 200A) and a sub-panel in the garage just for EV charging.

Miimura, thank you. You've already been helpful before by recommending that great iPhone app "PG&E Toolkit" and the E6 service. Now, I am more educated to know what to ask the electrician during our upgrade, and may ask about getting a panel with two meter sockets.