Three phase or not....

[wireguy8169]

Not sure where this question goes and it may not be of help to others but I have been curious about it for some time.

Some time ago, I was doing an GC's new office building about 10Kftsq. The non office area of this building was a shop had various equipement saws, planers, welders, non of which was going to be running at the same time for the most part. Anyhow, the customer wanted to see about three phase, which I told him was not needed but checked anyhow. The utility said unless they had a definite demand of say 80KVA or higher (may not be correct number but you get the idea) they would only give me an open delta, but would not hang three xfmmrs.

My first though was maybe it was just to costly but the customer had to pay forevery thing but the new poles they put in when they moved some conductors around for clearances.

Would the lack of demand cause a problem on the utility end of things, or is this just a policy that some utilities may have. I know you can't speak for the service providers unless your one but just wanted to know if there was an electrical reason for this....

 

[kwired]

Lack of demand means longer payback time on equipment they have to purchase. POCO's around here usually charge an "aid to construction" fee for providing power to a customer. The higher the customers demand/consumption will be the less the aid to construction will be because they will not spend a bunch of money on equipment that will not generate much revenue.

 

[gar]

100819-2032 EST

There is no need for three transformer. Three are more costly than one.

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[hurk27]

Here the customers pay up front, but the amount is deducted from their electric bill, so depending upon the usage, they will go without paying an electric bill for a while.

 

[gar]

100819-1101 EST

I should have said three transformers are more costly than two, and for three phase two transformers do a good job where a large part of the load is single phase. Very common in our area.

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