Upgrading to 3-phase power

[fang]

Does anyone know if there are any grant/funding available to upgrade to 3-phase power from single phase?

I have had a price from South West Energy to upgrade our supply, and they want £35,000 to do so.

Considering we are mean't to be getting greener it doesn't make sense to me that the energy companies or the government aren't funding upgrades.

We currently have solid fuel for heating and cooking, and I run a 3-phase generator to power the workshop, and a few other 3-phase bits.

Surely its about time the government upgraded all power supplies, especially rural ones, to 3-phase, seeing as they want us all to drive electric cars and be greener?

 

[Hesston4860s]

Watching this !, as I’m running a smokey old tractor like gassing ya on a PTO generator for all my power burning all the diesel in Lincolnshire to do it !.

 

[upnortheast]

Highly unlikey to be any grant help for a 3ph upgrade IMO
Round here Northern Powergrid have rebuilt a lot of rural lines & make them 3ph.
Still leaves the connection to individual consumers which they charge silly money for.
Cost us £27k 5 years ago for a 90kva 3ph supply
Remember on top of the £35k you will probably need some changes your side of the meter. depending on your current set up
Cost us circa £5k for 100 m cable & new fuse board, isolators & genny change over switch & connection boxes.
200 amp kit seems about 5x the price of standard 100 amp

 

[TechWise]

Best possible scenario is that they need onto your land to replace some poles or lines and you say no money needs to change hands so long as you get three phase put in while they're there. We got two 3-phase supplies in that way. Obviously you have to be a bit lucky with the timing.

 

[fang]

Might get lucky then if they decide to do any upgrade work.

The government seem intent on stopping us burning anything, but it's cheaper to keep burning fuel than pay for the upgrade which would mean we wouldn't need to burn anything.

 

[upnortheast]

Might get lucky then if they decide to do any upgrade work.

The government seem intent on stopping us burning anything, but it's cheaper to keep burning fuel than pay for the upgrade which would mean we wouldn't need to burn anything.

You can not expect polititions to think logically

 

[TechWise]

Might get lucky then if they decide to do any upgrade work.

The government seem intent on stopping us burning anything, but it's cheaper to keep burning fuel than pay for the upgrade which would mean we wouldn't need to burn anything.

Hold out if you can because you'll be kicking yourself if you pay the money then they turn up two years later wanting to do upgrades

I asked for a quote to shift a transformer back a pole and underground the connection from there to do away with an overhead span across the back of the silage pit. Quote came in at £16k with us to do all the groundworks. The day after the quote came in, an SP Energy Networks pickup was driving by and called in. He said he'd spotted a low hanging line across the back of our silage pit and as they were doing a safety initiative at the moment, would we mind if they buried it free of charge. That was in the morning, in the afternoon, a second van arrived and the engineer informed us he was there to look around because in 6 months time they wanted in to replace the entire line. You couldn't make it up.

Before all this, I actually did an internship with them during my degree. My manager got all excited when he heard I was a farmer's son because he wanted to know why farmers didn't like them. I told him the general consensus among farmers was that when you ask for a quote from them, they multiple together all the numbers of today's date, stick two zeros on the end and tell you that's the price!

To be fair, there was one guy in the office who, even though he knew nothing about it, was off to a site himself to verify that tile drains were being put back in properly and to ask the farmer to accompany him on a tour of the works to make sure it was being done to his satisfaction too. There are good people in these companies who will do you a favour if they can, but they can only get away with it if it's part of an already planned job.

 

[DanniAgro]

Get a generator, it's the only way. A bit of a nuisance when you have to go and start it, but just think of that lovely pile of money you'll save by not going with South WestEnergy.

 

[Courier]

Keep overloading your single phase supply, thats what we did and they offered 3 phase upgrade FOC

 

[Deutzdx3]

Get a generator, it's the only way. A bit of a nuisance when you have to go and start it, but just think of that lovely pile of money you'll save by not going with South WestEnergy.

If the Genny is set up right, you don't even need to start it. Ours starts it's self as soon as we push a switch on a machine if it's not already running. A bit of work to wire in a feed line to all the machines but save a lot of time now.

 

[Wombat]

Welcome to dealing with power companies

 

[Gormers]

Few years ago we looked into getting 3 phase
There are 2 more farms on our line & non would chip in and help with the cost
They could have upgraded for next to nowt if we stumped up
Needless to say we are still on single phase

 

[Northern territory]

Hold out if you can because you'll be kicking yourself if you pay the money then they turn up two years later wanting to do upgrades

I asked for a quote to shift a transformer back a pole and underground the connection from there to do away with an overhead span across the back of the silage pit. Quote came in at £16k with us to do all the groundworks. The day after the quote came in, an SP Energy Networks pickup was driving by and called in. He said he'd spotted a low hanging line across the back of our silage pit and as they were doing a safety initiative at the moment, would we mind if they buried it free of charge. That was in the morning, in the afternoon, a second van arrived and the engineer informed us he was there to look around because in 6 months time they wanted in to replace the entire line. You couldn't make it up.

Before all this, I actually did an internship with them during my degree. My manager got all excited when he heard I was a farmer's son because he wanted to know why farmers didn't like them. I told him the general consensus among farmers was that when you ask for a quote from them, they multiple together all the numbers of today's date, stick two zeros on the end and tell you that's the price!

To be fair, there was one guy in the office who, even though he knew nothing about it, was off to a site himself to verify that tile drains were being put back in properly and to ask the farmer to accompany him on a tour of the works to make sure it was being done to his satisfaction too. There are good people in these companies who will do you a favour if they can, but they can only get away with it if it's part of an already planned job.

Bugger we had new poles over ours a few years ago. Still in dispute over compensation, if I had known that would have asked them to put 3 phase in. Literally line is at back of yard

 

[Courier]

Get a generator, it's the only way. A bit of a nuisance when you have to go and start it, but just think of that lovely pile of money you'll save by not going with South WestEnergy.

Purely as an exercise do you know the cost per kWh of providing, servicing and fuelling a generator over say a 10 year period ?

 

[TechWise]

Bugger we had new poles over ours a few years ago. Still in dispute over compensation, if I had known that would have asked them to put 3 phase in. Literally line is at back of yard

The gift of hindsight eh? They're usually running two HV wires for a singe phase supply anyway so putting up a third while they're at it is nothing to them.

 

[Big_D]

Decent prospect of getting 3 phase installed here soon due to upcoming line upgrade. But I need to own up, despite having had it explained to me before, I don't fully understand the benefits of 3 phase, or the logistics involved in altering the existing fuse board etc. It's a dairy farm, so running vacuum pump, tank compressors etc. I mentioned it to our electrician couple of months ago and he put us off, saying it would be a huge amount of work for little gain? Supply coping currently, though house lights flicker when we start the parlour. Anyone willing to give me an idiots guide to 3 phase?!

 

[Steevo]

Few years ago we looked into getting 3 phase
There are 2 more farms on our line & non would chip in and help with the cost
They could have upgraded for next to nowt if we stumped up
Needless to say we are still on single phase

I guess they don’t see the value in it relative to the cost, and have other priorities for their money.

Money on farms is even tougher now sadly.

If you could propose a collaborative scheme like a joint venture grain dryer (even if the others never actually needed it) you might get grant funding to help with the cost which could bring it down. All you’d need from the neighbours is a signature.

 

[vantage]

Keep overloading your single phase supply, thats what we did and they offered 3 phase upgrade FOC

Not Western Power then, we paid to upgrade but no regrets about doing it.

 

[Gormers]

Think main problem is that we are all tenants
& the others don’t want to spend so next man may benefit
Short sighted in lmo

 

[vantage]

Decent prospect of getting 3 phase installed here soon due to upcoming line upgrade. But I need to own up, despite having had it explained to me before, I don't fully understand the benefits of 3 phase, or the logistics involved in altering the existing fuse board etc. It's a dairy farm, so running vacuum pump, tank compressors etc. I mentioned it to our electrician couple of months ago and he put us off, saying it would be a huge amount of work for little gain? Supply coping currently, though house lights flicker when we start the parlour. Anyone willing to give me an idiots guide to 3 phase?!

Your sparky sounds like the one we USED to have! We regularly used to blow the main fuse, capacitors on motors would burn out, had to limit use of electric in the house. 3 phase was needed for our new tank, changed parlour motors to 3 phase as we extended the parlour, they don’t need capacitors.