Lee and Peter Sailing Trip was for Four not Two Years. Now an Italian adventure

Now we have water 24 hours, time to talk about electric.

We were having a shower one evening hot water and all soaped up. Then the lights went off, and with an electric pump for water the water also stopped. Something must have turned on and put us over the 3kW limit, maybe the fridge? We were in the dark, all wet and soapy. Normally for most houses that is a small inconvenience, the meter is in the house. In our case the meter is 50 meters away at the top of a steep grass hill behind some bushes.

So Peter had to get dressed, put outdoor cloths and boots on (it is the middle of winter) and trudge up the hill to flick the switch. Then make sure we turned off something like the electric heater.

The Italian pricing system is different to US and UK. In Italy you agree a maximum load and if you exceed that a breaker at the meter cuts off. It is easily reset just a switch at the meter. Peter thinks this is a good system and explains why at the end of this post for those that are interested.

The same thing happened the next evening but at least we were not in the shower then.

The normal default is 3kW. That is something like an electric kettle (1kW) a room heater (2kW) on at the same time. Not a lot but Italians learn not to have too many appliances on at the same time. For example don’t boil water in an electric kettle while the washing machine is on. We understood the system but had not fully internalized the ramifications.

We decided to upgrade to 6kW at a one off cost of 250 Euro. Hopefully we do not get cut off again. At least it was not raining or snowing, be thankful for small blessings.

We also discovered other things about the electric supply to our house, that will be in the next blog post.

Why Peter thinks The Italian system is good.

If people are not aware of their maximum power usage the electric distribution system has to be designed so that everyone can turn on everything at the same time. That means bigger wires, transformers, switches etc. In practice the electric company makes a guess assuming not everyone turns on everything at the same time but they still need to oversize.

With the Italian system the electric contract specifies a maximum load and if exceeded the power is cut. This means that the electric distribution system can be sized to the agreed limit. As more people upgrade, like we did from 3kW to 6kW the supply company knows and can plan for the maximum load. In most cases the upgrade is instantaneous as there is excess capacity in the area. Sometimes customers have to wait to upgrade since cable and infrastructure is close to the limit and physical upgrades are needed.

The big benefit is that electric users are aware of capacity limits and do not to turn on big appliances at the same time.