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To: raybbr

It depends on the pole pig’s rating and how many households are on it.

I’ve seen neighborhoods where five homes are wired into one 15kVA pig. Get two people on that transformer who have electric cars in addition to the house loads and that’s a soon-to-be-ex transformer.

I’ve seen transformers fail because two people on the same transformer installed hot tubs with 40A 240V circuits for them. There were seven households wired into that 15kVA pig.

Utilities often let these situations go until something fails. I’ve never been able to convince a utility or co-op to install any additional distribution transformers until one has failed. Never. And that situation with two hot tubs was so blinding obvious in the overload, it was absurd. There was a 27V swing in the 240V voltage when the two hot tubs came on concurrently. I could just put my Fluke on the drop from the transformer to either one of those houses (by opening their breaker box and putting the meter across the two hot leads from the meter) and just yell across the street to have both parties turn up the heat on their hot tubs. No dice until it went bye-bye.

If you’re on your own pig (which in many new developments might be a 15kVA ground-mount transformer), or you’re in a situation where you’re sharing a 25kVA pig or ground-mount, you should do OK, even if both households were to get electric cars.


70 posted on 11/28/2010 6:12:03 PM PST by NVDave
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To: NVDave
I’ve seen neighborhoods where five homes are wired into one 15kVA pig. Get two people on that transformer who have electric cars in addition to the house loads and that’s a soon-to-be-ex transformer.

Then the same thing could happen if they both turned on their dryer at the same time.

The charger only requires a 30A circuit. I don't know what the initial surge is but it can't be that high. I can't find the specs but I am guessing the FLA is about 20.

84 posted on 11/28/2010 6:19:07 PM PST by raybbr (Someone who invades another country is NOT an immigrant - illegal or otherwise.)
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