[ale] Not so evil empire

[David Ritchie]

On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 3:13 PM, Robert Reese<ale at sixit.com> wrote:


> I do remember quite a few custom homes getting 3-Phase service.  What the requirements or procedures are to acquire it is, I do not know.  My guess it is more utility provider specific and local ordnance specific.  I also remember that I was, and am, determined to get 3-Phase when my wife and I finally build our own home.


I did some poking around on the Georgia Power website, and it appears
that you *can* get 3 phase power in a residential area, but my guess
is  you won't like the cost. My experience was with KUB, and they
wouldn't even consider it in a residential area because of the
engineering cost. I am trying to think of something in household use
that would require that many KVA to run (short of a large lathe or a
large enterprise disk array :^) )  Also, there phase will greatly kick
up the cost, as you will need to have
commerical metering (which I recall was 3 heads, one for each phase),
breaker panels, and roughly
balance out the loads between the 3 phases. Sounds like too much
trouble to me.... What are you
going to run that requires that much KVA? The people I see that look
for this in residential areas are
people running large Bridgeport CNC machines or large industrial scale
woodworking gear...

I suspect that the people who primarily befit from this would be
farmers and woodworkers... which
probably should be considered commercial users anyway...

Best regards,
Dave