Running electric down driveway?

I'm not sure about the easement. A blanket easement is exactly what I'd want to avoid. We hope to find out within the next few weeks.

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I think the price charged by the electric company varies a lot. I had power installed underground 300 feet last fall, they use 4 awt wire, charged by $1400. 4 awt wire is about $4.50 a foot. So I would have lost money doing the job myself.

The engineer I talked to said that 300 feet is the farthest they will go with 110/220 volt. Longer distances you must run high voltage (17K ?), then have a transformer near your house and step it down.

I also looked at running power 1000 feet, the cost for them to install would have been $6500. I am sure I could not have done it myself for any cheaper.

The advantage to having them run it to your house is that they are responsible for maintenance up to you meter. If there are any problems they fix it.

I did not have to give an easment, I just had to give them permission to inspect/repair the line, and access to the meter (it's electronic so they don't have to read it).

Power companies are different everywhere. They all have their own rules, and fees.

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Hi,
Quite a challenge you have.

Here is one rather odd way your problem might be handled.

As has been pointed out, if you run a quarter mile of wire to your house from the power company transformer at 240 VAC, the voltage drop will be very high.
Even with 4/0 wire its just not workable to supply the 100 amps that a house might use as a peak demand.

But, you talked about an off grid PV installation with batteries, and a large generator. Large generators are a pain in many ways -- costly to buy, costly to maintain, costly to run, noisy, inefficient, ...

An alternative to the generator might be to charge your batteries via low amperage connection to the grid. This might work because the voltage drop goes up as the square of the current flowing through the wire.

So, for example, using 4/0 wire at 0.049 ohms per thousand feet, and running a 240 VAC battery charger at 5 amps, the voltage drop over the quarter mile is:
Drop = (5 amp)^2*(0.049 ohm/1kft) (2.6 kft) = 3.2 volts

This is a quite acceptable voltage drop -- you might even get away with smaller wire.

With an 80% efficient charger, this would give you a charge rate of about 1 KW, or 24 KWH per day, or 720 KWH per month. Thats more electricity than we use per month.

If you invested in PV panels to generate some of the power, you would not need to run the charger 24/7, or could use a smaller charger and smaller (less costly) wire.

Basically you would be using a low current grid connection to avoid buying and running a generator.

Not sure what the power company would think of this, but I don't see why they would object. You would be responsible for all of the quarter mile of buried line.

Gary

Then they come through every so often and spray it.

My neighbor run Lines along my property a couple years ago.We went through and cut the trees and all.Then the Electric Company comes out deciding where their going to put the Poles.Well there was a misunderstanding,I thought they was going to run right down my fence.Wrong they was running them about 50 feet on my side of the Fence Well I run them off.They wasn't to happy when they came back out to mark their Poles.

big rockpile

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That is certainly thinking outside of the box!

Pretty much like using a 1/2 gallon output well, accumulate the water slowly but constantly in a cistern, then use the water in bigger chunks but not all the time when you need it.

According to a 3% loss voltage calculator

http://www.elec-toolbox.com/calculators/voltdrop.htm

Getting 200 amps to the house would require 1750 mcm aluminum, which is just honking huge & $$$$.

But it says you can run #1 wire to get 10 amps that distance, which is at least a possible size. Or #4 to get 5 amps.

As you say, I don't know what the utility & local inspectors would think of planning to run a 10 amp service...... That could be a hard sell. Also, the inefficiencies of inverting & storing & maintaing batteries would be a big negative, unless you were running wind/solar as well. without home-grown energy, a transformer setup might be cheaper long term.

But, sure an interesting thought.

--->Paul

You guys are talking way over my head now, I'll have to copy these answers to a text file and let my brainy husband read through them, LOL.

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What they're suggesting is kind of a hybrid system that gives you the best of both worlds. Normal service to a house is a minimum of 100 amps by code, usually 200 these days. Code states the service must be designed for under 5% voltage drop, meaning with your long feed you need HUGE cable for a 240v 100amp service. But, you don't always need 100 amps, actually you probably never need 100 amps, and only actually use a peak of maybe 60 for a short time.

So if you have batteries at the house, and use an inverter to generate the power the house will use, you can charge up the batteries with a low current over time, still get your power from the grid to avoid the solar+generator hassles, but since you charge the batteries at say 5 amps, you can run much smaller cable, and save money.

I'm not sure it'd be worth it in the long run, but it's an interesting approach, definately "thinking outside of the box" and probably worth running some numbers on. Remember to account for replacing batteries periodically, though with a grid tie your batteries would never discharge much, so you'd probably get a very long life from them.

Another thought - If you're in an agricultural area you might be able to get a 480v serivce at the road, then run a 480 feed back to the house, and use a transformer to convert the 480 to 240/120 for your household use. Your currents on the 480 line would be smaller (around half) so you could save some on wire that way.

If the well is the big concern, put it by the road with a BIG pump and run a BIG 1/4 mile water pipe to the house. Of course you would still need an off-grid system to run everything else.

Well now there's a thought! It'd be another 150 foot deeper at the top though.

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As far as the easement... If you own your property out right you might consider splitting it. Take a small section your house sets on and a 30' wide section that is your driveway and get them surveyed and get a new seperate plat. Then give them an easement on that. That would kind of limit where they could string poles and lines around your property.

Actually, a major concept is being missed here. Current, not voltage, determines the size of the wire used. Ever look up at the transformer in front of your house? Given you are not hooked up directly to a major supply line; the wires to your house are probably larger than the actual lines on top of the pole. In fact, your house wires are most likely carrying more current. That line on top of the pole is carrying maybe 5 amps, that's it.

Running secondaries that distance is going to be a waist to someone, depending on where the meter is located. Guaranteed the meter won’t be at the house; then the power company is flipping the bill for the power loss. That would be like someone going to the reservoir, filling their hole filled bucket with water, carrying it home, and then expect the water company to only charge them for the water that actually made it to the house.

All a transformer does is convert power and since voltage is inversely proportional to current, that 7200V/1amp primary becomes a 120V/60amp house service.

It makes no sense to run secondary voltage a 1/4 of a mile. Primary voltage must be run back to the house with smaller wire (probably #2 stranded or 6A). And if you want to be all secretive and private, the power company does have meters that they can read remotely from their location.

Hubby spoke with the engineer at the power company. This is over my head, but I think what he said is that they discussed running it underground with 240v (the engineer is going to figure the voltage drop and see if it's feasible) and 7200v(?) underground with a transformer at the house. They'll figure the cost and feasibility (along with one other option, I can't recall what ).

Anyway, when they get back to us with the options, I'll post them here along with the estimated costs. At least they were willing, I was surprised!

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I do not know much about electricity however we have electricity/phone line into/on our Cabin property and it runs for 1/2 mile uphill from the gate. The meter box is nailed to a post/board at the gate. All that is in the ground is that fat gray (I think it is gray but it may be black) electric wire. The former owner would not allow anyone on his property, had them run the box to the gate area, then he ran the main elec line to the Cabin. It works just fine. We saw it once when we had to run a water line but we just covered it back up. Good luck.

I don't know the specifics as my husband did the deal, but our electric company ran our line underground for us. We have an 800+ drive and they ran the line (buried) it to the transformer they put in. We did the meter box (like someone else mentioned) and they hooked stuff up for us. Total cost was $6,000 for a 400(?) amp service. Of course it was six years ago.

We decided to add on to the house so we needed to move the transformer box and change the point of entry to the house; REMC will be be trenching from their powerline they put in last time and over to where we want the box moved to. Cost: $619 and but we are putting up a new backboard for the meter and have to trench from the transformer box to the meter box ourselves. I didn't think the cost was too bad, but I about croaked when we picked up more wire today, its went up a bit since last time we bought it!

KimE, we expect the cost to be in the range of $10k, which is our limit (more or less) on what we're willing to spend on underground power. If it's significantly more, we'll be entirely off grid.

When we bought this piece of property 2 years ago, we figured a road and power in would add another $20-25K to the purchase price, so it isn't like we weren't expecting it. I just hope we "guestimated correctly"!

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CJ, 10 k is out of the question. Let me talk to an electrician that works for the power company here and see what he says. I have never run cables that far but I have ran them several hundred feet. I think about 600 feet is the longest run I ever did and that's a little less than half of what you are talking. That was the last one I wired up about 4 years ago. I dug the ditch and layed the wire and they set a pole about 25 feet from the house with a transformer on it. It cost $1,100 for the pole and transformer and then the wire came from that to the meter on the house.
Like I said, it was about 4 years ago but it didn't cost anything near 10 k's. I'll call Jerry after church and ask about it. I live in Va. and the codes here are about as bad as anywhere other than California and N.Y. I think any way.
Dennis

Crafty, I'm just guessing at the cost, I actually have no idea yet, as we're waiting on the engineers at the power company to get back to us on the cost. They're going to figure it several different ways. Hopefully it will be half that! Our driveway is running a bit more than we planned, as we decided to make it so that our semi and 5th wheel could access the bottom where we intend to build, rather than putting a separate RV pad at the top near the road as originally planned. The labor was reasonable on it, but 30 loads of gravel ain't cheap!

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CJ, I don't know about AR's electric companies, but the Co-op here only wanted an easement the width of the cleared trees, basically 30' wide. If I had went underground, their easement width would've been a lot less.

I had easement concerns also... didn't want to pay to get electricity brought in, and this action spur development on neighboring properties. Especially since I have one neighbor that I don't get along with AT ALL (what's worse, he's a 1st cousin). So, when negotiating with the co-op, I got the engineer to put the line inside my property line a good sixty feet. This way, the easement granted to the co-op would still be a good 45' or more from the neighboring property. (If the electric line was closer than 15' to the boundary line, they could connect to my line, without permission) Checked with a lawyer, and the co-ops board of directors about the easement, and the possibilities of neighbor connecting to my line. They all agreed, and signed papers acknowledging this.... that the neighbor couldn't connect without my consent.

So, if your concerns are about spurring development, and the bane of the earth...NEIGHBORs... I'd double check with your utility company about the width of the easement, and whether anyone could connect on to your line, without your approval.

good luck

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Texican, home (and our land) is in Missouri, we're just in AR working.

I don't want to give them an easement, period. Call me paranoid, but I don't want to give up any rights to our land that I don't have to by law.

We're waiting to see what they quote us on running the line underground (most feasible will likely be 7200v 1/4 mile in, with the transformer at the house location (more or less). We'll own and be responsible for this line and transformer. The meter will be at the road.

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