@transparent Groan.

@transparent I think using the term electrician is going too far, these guys are cable jointers, no formal training in electrics. The guys that fit the meters are meter installers, no formal electrical training.  And my experience of electricians fitting my heat pump or solar was frightening, I think they were bad electricians who have jumped on the bandwagon, here we go make a quick buck, nobody checks or cares. 

I agree with what’s said, they ran three phase into my house and money on its on the same phase all the houses are on in the village and all with heat pumps and solar. One single phase and all the same one. 

@david999 I thought the idea was to ‘spread’ the three phases across houses in a road so that the chances are your next door neighbour is on one of the other two phases - and so on along the road. Regards, Toodles.

@toodles I thought they were going to spread the load in my house onto the three phases but told they won’t.  Said they only ran the three phase in in case I get a burnt out cable and it saves them digging up my garden again, or if I need three phase in the future then I’m good to go.  I had overloaded the cables, we, all four houses were looped in pairs and my house the only one that got three phase. But during discussions with the surveyor from Scottish power it was agreed the best way to go. I have no idea what goes on underground or at the substation other than the data transparent was kind enough to provide.  But my take on it was I was getting my loads split over the three phases which I can’t get it seems.  I also presume that we must all be looped in “kind off” but underground now and the poor cable will be puffing away.  If I pull more than 100 amps my supply fuse will pop so I’m ok in my home, walker watts the Scottish power contractor thought I was at the high end of my supply rating and if we do some arithmetic it’s a fair bit, but I doubt I would blow the fuse.  Does someone know what the working range is before the 100 amps feed becomes an issue?

Another though, if I overloaded the 100 amp supply, how would they give me a more powerful feed without using another one of those phases.  

Posted by: @david999

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all four houses were looped in pairs

Let me explain that term, then we can more clearly use it this discussion.

The DNOs use the words looped and shared to describe similar situations in which more than one home is being supplied with the same single-phase feed from the 3-phase cable in the road.

Looped supplies were commonly used after the 2nd world war when there were lots of estates being built with rows of terraced houses.

They are usually identifiable as such on the DNOs maps.

Shared supplies shouldn't exist, but tend to occur when a house has been divided into flats.
They can sometimes show up when a Smart Meter is fitted, or when ECOES gets called in because a tenant has left and there's an outstanding bill.

DNOs have a policy of removing looped and shared supplies as and when the property applies to them for G98/G99 generation consent, or for LCT installations (Heat Pumps and EV Chargers).

This is a plan which I've anonymised, but these are real houses on a 1950s estate:

Houses 3 and 4 have a looped supply.
Moreover the feed to House-4 uses a 16mm² underground cable.
In effect the two houses are sharing a feed wire which is nominally rated for 60A.

Houses 1 and 2 used to be looped.
However, the DNO has run a new underground feed to supply House-2.

@transparent I spoke with the cable guys and they said it’s not always the case three phase is in the street, reason was of course, why have you not connected me up is there no cable. But in my case it’s there.  

do you know the max loadings per phase and how do they determine what phase to use. Will they have bothered to be honest and they were the most unmotivated guys so far to work on my house. You think Scottish power, top dogs but a bunch of cowboys in my opinion. 

True @david999 - not all properties have three-phase available.
I live in a rural area with long overhead 11kV cable runs to reach farms and hamlets.
They often only have two-phases available, which is called a "split phase supply".

Here's an anonymised 11kV rural supply, where pole-mounted transformer 30/5246 is on a split-phase run.

Where there is 3-phase available in the road, to connect a new/replacement single-phase supply, the engineers tap into whichever phase is on top of the cable!

It's not very scientific, but usually statistically random enough to spread the load across the phases.

Posted by: @david999

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they were the most unmotivated guys so far to work on my house. You think Scottish power, top dogs but a bunch of cowboys in my opinion. 

Your experience is uncommon.

Generally a DNO attracts high-quality staff.
The Area Distribution Manager might be running a team of around 30-50 engineers, supported by ground workers who actually dig the holes and replace poles.

That Manager is an engineer himself/herself, and will have been further trained in people-management and motivational teamwork strategies.
They would probably like to hear of your experience if you had a way to find out who they are.

@transparent I spoke with their boss when it began to go wrong and he said it’s typical of the standards but would get it sorted. The sort of site manager who paraded about with a white hat did nothing and the workmen didn’t speak highly of him. My personal experience of him was unfilled promises and a general lack of experience, although claiming to be a spark. At one point he told me he was going to run my three phase cable  around my facias which I replied was impossible, the cable is nearly 40mm in diameter and no way that was going to go around a 90 bend let alone how ugly the orange cable would look. He made an effort to show me how he would bend it but couldn’t.  The entire job was a train wreck, a three day job ran into two weeks, destroying my loft insulation “newly installed” and he promised to use crawl boards but never.

my neighbours box went on the front of the house when it should really have gone on the gable end where mine is, but too much bother, and the cabling on my other neighbours is pathetic and that’s a second attempt and single phase. Mine was worse and I made them refit it.  The only guys who were good workers were the ones who dug the holes, the other ones a waste of space. They turned up first day without a ladder and sat in the van until lunchtime waiting on one. I thought I was perhaps picky but the octopus commented on their cabling as well. My install was so bad they gave me compensation. 

@transparent what are you producing today, I’m only getting 0.1, overcast.  Is this typical of what we should expect during winter

@david999 I have an 8.1 kWp system consisting of 4 arrays variously orientated on house roof, a flat roof, workshop roof and ground mounted in garden. Those 21 panels are not ideally orientated and we now have some tree shadowing on the garden mounts. Today’s production is averaging 0.2 kW and at 11:25 we have produced a grand total of 1.3 kWh. ‘Normally’ I would expect to see something in the region of ~2 - 2.5 kW by this time and I am attaching a screen grab of August production.

Regards, Toodles.

@toodles I have been quite pleased with average daily electricity bills 2-3 quid. Hoping that additional panels would keep up that production during the winter, but I suspect I’m being over ambitious bordering on foolish. My thermal solar during winter would give 30c water and comparable figures for the PV was in my head but perhaps it’s just a bad day. Batteries are giving me a better return at the minute being able to charge at the 7p rate but I need more, much more and not practical.  Anyway it’s early days and perhaps it will get better.