Small main breaker to safe electricity

[Thys LOW Elektries]

Morning, it surprises me to read of the houses with 60A and 80A mains, and the homeowners complain about not having enough electricity to run all their appliances. I guess a huge stove, tumble dryer, ac in every room, underfloor heating and the rest finally add up.
Here in Orania some of the houses have a 40A main breaker on the street, the lucky ones. Several houses have a 30A main breaker on the street and even a couple of houses with 25A main breakers.
We manage, we call it energy efficiency! We use gas stoves, gas geysers, solar geysers, or both and a large number of homes have a small inverter system to give them a bit of leverage so they can run luxury items.
We are a small town working hard to be less reliant on Eskom. Why can't other cities and towns do the same?
Have a great weekend

[AndyD]

There was a thread the other day that started me thinking about this, from what I understood the OP was hoping to provide 40-50Amps supply to each dwelling to accomodate a 32A stove, 20A plug cct and 10A lighting. It was someone sizing distribution for a new supply transformer in an informal housing area and I thought when I read it that the planned supply size was unnecessarily large. IMHO a household could have a 15A or 20A supply and still get nearly all the benefits of one with a 60A supply. Obviously they couldn't run electric house heating apart from maybe a panel heater and also no hot large water cylinder, only a normal kettle for hot water for dishes or a bathroom sink but these are relatively minor inconveniences that can be got around using readily available and probably cheaper to run gas appliances. Yeah I know LPG is fossil fuels that are causing the dolphins and turtles to go tits up but you've got to be a realist when addressing a power problem in a country thats got coal burning power stations that are only running because they're ignoring every emissions guidline known to mankind.

The standard 60A 230v domestic supply in most areas where I am in Cape Town is pretty normal although some older areas have 50A or even 25A 3-phase. It's actually very large compared to what I've seen in many other countries, even 'first world' ones. Places I've lived and worked like Spain was 25A normal suburbia supply and France was 30A or even as low as 16A in older suburban properties and Malta was 25A. The UK is one of the highest I've ever come across with 100A or 80A s/phase being the norm there but countries with old buildings and cold/very hot climates need a larger supply if they've got electric heating or air-con. I'm guessing that historical UK influence in this country might be why we also have such a big houshold supply in some places and it sounds to me like Orania has got domestic electgrical supply on par with most of Europe and many other parts of the world.

[Isetech]

Back in the days of halogen lights, stoves, 4 kw electric geysers, saunas, koi ponds and 18000 BTU aircons, if you lived in an upmarket property 3 phase was the way to go.

Now we have upmarket house with 60 amp supplies, aircons in every room, gas stoves and geysers, 8 kva inverters and 30 panels on the roof

[Derlyn]

We would be able to live quite comfortably with a 15A supply.

The only change is that I would have to fire up the rocket geyser for a warm shower instead of the 5Kw showerhead that has been serving that purpose for the last +- 8 years. ( still the cheapest way , other than solar, of having a hot shower).