Since before WWII, homes have been supplied by single offshoot phases from the main 3 phase supply running through the commercial, industrial, and nationwide infrastructure. Why? And is it time to change?
Overkill
For transporting energy, 3 phase offers its own apparent uses – a topic for a deeper dive on its own. But on the scale of an individual home, 3 phase supports far more load than is really necessary at all. To keep the lights on, and the kettle boiling, just one of the three phases is adequate enough.
3 phase, by design and intention, maintains a stable flow of electricity, each wave balancing the other two like legs of a sturdy stool. This is particularly crucial when generating the electricity, to maximise the output of the motor. A single phase however, delivered to your home, fluctuates. Without the other two phases to balance it out, there’s an imbalanced frequency to the electricity. Thankfully, this isn’t really an issue on the consumer end; after all, we’re just consuming the energy.
It should now be clear what the best supply for a home is – single phase or 3 phase – based on just 3 factors:
- Homes don’t generate electricity, and so do not benefit from 3 phase connection.
- Single phase supplies enough energy to support a home’s electrical needs.
- Connecting homes with just one phase is markedly cheaper.
So that’s the current state of common domestic infrastructure: one home, one phase.
But technology is always improving…
Return to Sender – ‘Homes don’t generate’
Over the last 20 years, residential power generation has been on the rise. With the steady increase of solar panel installation, the need to feed back into the grid has increasingly become a focal point. With at-home generation potentially exceeding home consumption, and future technology increasing in efficiency and output, it’s foreseeable that a single phase simply won’t be enough for much longer.
If we also consider 3 phase generators (like windmills), the benefits of access to 3-phase connection to the grid is even more apparent. Future energy storage may also strongly rely on a decentralised approach – that is, homes themselves may store energy in various ways, and need to feed energy back in quickly for short periods of time.
On a large scale, energy supply is gradually approaching a more equally distributed network, as opposed to being a system of sending and receiving. The divisions between consumer and producer are blurring, and the infrastructure will soon need to reflect that.
Hungry for More – ‘Single phase supplies enough’
As well as the beginnings of at-home energy production, we are rapidly approaching a significant increase in energy consumption. As technology improves within the home, new appliances require less energy as efficiency is improved. However, outside the home, a whole new industry is making a seat for itself at the energy table: electric vehicles.
The average household energy consumption reaches up to around 10 kWh per day. A fully electric vehicle’s battery can draw and hold upwards of 65kWh. So for overnight charging, speed is a key factor. Local energy storage (eg through wall-mounted batteries) can significantly support this, but a 3 phase connection can provide very fast recharge times: a benefit that will soon be in high demand.
Where is it Now? What Does the Future Hold?
The need for 3 phase connection is, at the moment, a theoretical requirement of and motivator for future development. It’s understandably not received a great deal of traction as a concept since first seriously surfacing a few years ago. However, for home owners that expect to be producing their own energy, or moving into electric vehicles ahead of the trend, it’s a project of foresight that is growing in interest. For them, the imminent usage of 3 phase is more apparent.
Time will tell if 3-phase in the home is a worthwhile endeavour to encourage nationwide, although the trends suggest it’s less a matter of if, and more a matter of when. It’s highly unlikely to see much excitement in existing builds; only homeowners that need that kind of supply connection immediately will really be looking to upgrade. And with alternative methods to support growing demand, the margin of interested parties diminishes. For lower-income areas, the production and consumption won’t catch up for a long time – if at all – so single phase will likely remain the norm for at least this generation, if not 2 or 3. For new builds in more wealthy areas, however, 3 phase distribution boards might start to spark much more interest in the coming years.
Single phase has been – and still is – the cheapest option to meet demand. But if the demands are changing, how long will it remain the ‘cheapest’ option?
(2 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)
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