The title doesn't refer to Alexandra's car.
Today we discovered the hard way that our electrical service is limited to 3 kW. More than that and a breaker trips at the meter. Apparently this is a limitation of our electrical plan, and if we wanted to we could upgrade the plan.
A standard branch circuit in my house in Atlanta is 15 amps at 110 volts. At full load that is 1.5 kW. My house service is 200 amps at 220 volts. Theoretically I could pull 40 kW. Our service here, which was perfectly adequate through the hot August, is not even a 10th of that.
Let's break this down: we can run the oven, the washing machine, or the hair dryer, but not any three of those at the same time. The microwave? We don't have one of those.
The funny thing is that we use so little electricity that we didn't notice right away when the power went out. I had heated up some lunch in the oven (while Florence loaded the washing machine). There was plenty of light in the house so we didn't have the lights on. It wasn't until I went to wash the dishes that we discovered there was no power. The electronically controlled instant water heater wouldn't come on.
Michael
What a good thing you know how to deal with stuff like that and didn't have to find an electrician on a Sunday!
ReplyDeleteWhat a hoot!
ReplyDelete