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We need a lot more electricians

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Re: We need a lot more electricians

#261

Post by quenix »

mikeg8 wrote: post #220
commandlinefan wrote: post #133

I thought I wanted to be an electrician growing up in the 80's, but my parents steered me away from it into the then-booming programming field. It does seem like programmers are doing a lot better than electricians these days.

Financially, yes. Physically? I’d bet good money most electricians are in much better physical shape. Pulling wire, climbing ladders, using hand tools… it’s more physically demanding than people think. (My cousin is a journeyman electrician and I helped him wire the new house I built).

We have gyms for this :)

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#262

Post by epistasis »

throwaway4aday wrote: post #208
epistasis wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly every state in the us has very viable solar. The blockers are not economic, but regulatory from the utility and utility commission side. There are small solar arrays all over farms in Minnesota, for example. Solar is super cheap, and only getting cheaper. Cheap enough that one can start to size your array for the seasonal minimum. And as storage gets super cheap this decade, solar plus storage are a "baseload"…

I'll believe this when I see successful startup utilities cropping up all over for the low capital investment of buying a field and filling it with solar panels. Hell, I'd settle for seeing the existing utility companies doing this en masse.

The barrier to this isn't economics, it's the regulatory process for utilities, which are often regulated to be monopolies.

And for that matter, this sort of building of solar projects by small players has been going on for years, very successfully, under a PPA model.

In places where it's allowed for startups to build new generation resources and get compensated on the market, such as Texas' ERCOT, solar is a dominant force. The challenge is not the tech, the challenge is that too many people are doing it, draining the supply chain:

https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2022/07/satellite-data...

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#263

Post by abakker »

anikom15 wrote: post #144
londons_explore wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They only need to be installed in specific places... But they ought to be installed for the whole house. You do want your refrigerator on one. What when your mom is putting a metal saucepan into the fridge of leftovers, knocks and smashes the lamp inside, and the AC lamp power supply kills her though the metal saucepan? What when a baby puts a fork into an electrical outlet in the living room? What when floodwater co…

My mom doesn’t live with me (the bulb inside the fridge is LED anyway), I don’t have a baby (babies don’t carry metal forks), and I live on the second floor (but the power would be out long before the first floor floods). I don’t want whole house GFCI.

I agree that over-zealous GFCI is annoying. BUT, as a new parent, I can assure you that babies will manifest dangerous objects and do dangerous things.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#264

Post by giantg2 »

tibbon wrote: post #116
anikom15 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which country? In the U.S., GFCIs only need to be installed in specific locations, which is good. I do not want my refrigerator or computer on a GFCI. In the U.K., you just can’t have plugs in bathrooms (aside from the shaver plug), which is probably more sensible.

You need a AFCI in most places now. In the 2020 edition of the NEC®, Section 210.12 requires that for dwelling units, all 120-volt, single-phase, 15- and 20-ampere branch circuits supplying outlets or devices installed in dwelling unit kitchens, family rooms, dining rooms, living rooms, parlors, libraries, dens, bedrooms, sunrooms, recreation rooms, closets, hallways, laundry areas, or similar rooms or areas shall be…

"At $50 a pop, that's a quick $1200."

See, this is the part I hate. I bet someone patented the design, then the NEC made it mandatory, and now they just rake in the money on something that likely costs <$10 to make. If something is legally mandatory, it should not be patented.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#265

Post by danans »

bluGill wrote: post #169
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She's right. Induction has the speed and response of a gas cooktop with the precision a resistance electric cooktop. This, and also easier cleanability than either of them (basically it doesn't need more cleaning than the rest of your kitchen counter) and much safer (won't heat anything non-metallic that you leave on top, won't heat the surface of the stovetop itself except indirectly via heat transmission from the…

I've been looking at them, but almost all have unusable touch controls. (My background is human machine interaction - I've never seen an acceptable stove, but induction stoves are all really bad). Since I've have to replace all my cookware as well I'm not in any hurry.

Functionally, the touch controls make the whole thing much easier to clean, but I agree they are harder to use.

As with the touchscreens in cars, I'm sure it's also about marketing a sleeker product and lowering the bill of materials and labor - hence cost of manufacturing.

Just wait a little longer and a manufacturer will start offering physical dials on an induction stove as a high-end feature, but also realize that it will still be control by wire like a computer input device, not a mechanically coupled control like a (dumb) dimmer switch - since it would be ultimately controlling the inductor in the stovetop via software.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#266

Post by mschuster91 »

londons_explore wrote: post #99
actionfromafar wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But not too tight, or the strands may break.

I have seen lots of near-fires/melted things from under-tightening, but I have never seen a single near-fire from overtightening. I suspect it's a myth - I don't think you could overtighten any connector sufficiently to make it be a fire risk without the screw shearing first. I'd be interested to see tests demonstrating otherwise though. Obviously if you are doing it to the standards, you crimp the wire first and use…

> I have seen lots of near-fires/melted things from under-tightening, but I have never seen a single near-fire from overtightening.

That depends what you see as near-fire ;) I recently helped out a friend whose lights had issues after she installed a more powerful fixture, turns out that the person installing it overtorqued the wire in the switch so much it nearly sheared off probably already during installation, and came completely apart when I took the switch out of the wall.

Better be safe than sorry and use Wago clips.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#267

Post by rsync »

danans wrote: post #28
toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need to upgrade your service entrance, if it's within your means, go to 400A to future proof (EVs, HVAC and hot water heat pumps, induction stove, and other large loads all add up, along with colocated generation of some sort). Depending on your authority having jurisdiction (AHJ) and utility, they may require a licensed electrician to replace the raceway or similar entrance to the meter. 200A is satisfactory…

> if it's within your means, go to 400A to future proof (EVs, HVAC and hot water heat pumps, induction stove, and other large loads all add up, along with colocated generation of some sort I have all of these on 200A with amps to spare. But I have a small house. I suppose if I had multiple EVs, dryers, or heat pumps, or 3000sqft it would be a different story.

Again, see above - it's not about 400 amps per se ... it's about putting in bigger wire because we can't predict the future.

It's spending a small additional amount now (on wire) to avoid an enormous expense (trench digging) in the future.

Oh, and you know that 3" conduit required for the 400amp ? Make it 4".

Oh, and you know that trench you just dug ? Throw in double 1.5" and double 3/4 conduits right in there with it.

Oh and you know that first two feet of dirt you filled in ? Now throw two more 3/4 conduits on top of that because you never know when a common carrier on that same pole will have fiber up on it ...

Future you will be very happy you did.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#268

Post by epistasis »

vehemenz wrote: post #233
epistasis wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly every state in the us has very viable solar. The blockers are not economic, but regulatory from the utility and utility commission side. There are small solar arrays all over farms in Minnesota, for example. Solar is super cheap, and only getting cheaper. Cheap enough that one can start to size your array for the seasonal minimum. And as storage gets super cheap this decade, solar plus storage are a "baseload"…

These are good points, but I would add that there are not qualified installers of solar in most areas. I'm not sure if you'd chalk that up to regulation or economics, but it's probably a little bit of both.

Yes, standard growing pains for an industry that is doubling in production roughly every four years.

The rate at which the industry is scaling is absolutely amazing.

But even as in the original post about electricians, skilled workforce labor remains one of the bottlenecks.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#269

Post by vel0city »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #153
danans wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my wife won't accept an ordinary electric range She's right. Induction has the speed and response of a gas cooktop with the precision a resistance electric cooktop. > and an electric water heater. Make sure it's a heat pump water heater if efficiency and operating cost matter to you.

> She's right. Induction has the speed and response of a gas cooktop with the precision a resistance electric cooktop. This, and also easier cleanability than either of them (basically it doesn't need more cleaning than the rest of your kitchen counter) and much safer (won't heat anything non-metallic that you leave on top, won't heat the surface of the stovetop itself except indirectly via heat transmission from the…

I've got an electric radiant cooktop. It has a number of those features such as easy to clean (just a flat glass panel) and won't heat without detecting a pan and will turn off the element if the pan is removed for more than a couple of seconds. It does get hot itself instead of just heating the pan, but when cooking I don't know that would make much of a difference. You've still got a very hot pan sitting on the cooktop imparting a lot of heat for probably a while.

Don't get me wrong there's other pros/cons to induction but you don't need to get induction to have those benefits.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#270

Post by petre »

kuschku wrote: post #213
petre wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

400V between phases, 230V phase to neutral. Most homes have single phase though.

So how would you run an instant water heater or electric induction stove then? Every apartment and house I've ever lived in had 380V three-phase right to the kitchen, to the bathroom, and to basement rooms (e.g. for prosumer workshop tools).

We don't run an instant water heater. It's all gas or electric boilers.

For the stove I wired one phase to all the burners and the oven. It had one, two or three phase options. They're on a separate circuit with a 16 amp fuse. It's 2200W I believe. The breaker has never tripped.

400V is just not very common for residential in the Eastern Europe, maybe in your country you have instant electric heaters and other powerful appliances. My dad has recently upgraded his house to 400V 3 phase though, although he didn't need it but it's nice to have.

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