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The future of residential building electrical installations

Arran Cameron
This is a spin-off from the discussion What is the best way to wire ceiling lights.


What do you think is the future of residential building electrical installations in 20 to 30 years time? Will they in modern and modernised houses be significantly different from what they are today or will they most likely be barely changed from what they are today?


Will consumer demand be a driving force for change or will electricians only make changes from the status quo in order to comply with updated wiring regs?
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    I believe that to achieve the levels of housebuilding being promised by the various political parties we will have to move towards more prefabrication in house building factories The electrics will be built in using semi skilled labour and connected up on site, probably using some specialised plug/socket system. Due to cost constraints there will no attention paid to  making the systems flexible so future modifications will be difficult. 


    Some developments  will probably be printed on site using large 3D printers with a wiring loom mostly manufactured in a factory to be installed by semi skilled labour.


    I forecast he demise of the ring as it will be too difficult to find adequately trained people to test and properly install. The electricians who have knowledge of ring circuits will be busy maintaining the existing housing stock. As MCBs, RCDs and RCBOs become even cheaper there will be more circuits , possibly one per outlet on power. 


    Intelligent appliances will handle most of the load shedding required and as mentioned above the maximum capacity of the supply to each house will be limited. Not sure what the limitation will do for fast charging of electric cars but owning cars may be uneconomic by then and we will just hire a self driving car for each journey.


    Electric car charging will be standard and houses may even have three phase supplies as standard with the higher power appliances using 430V to reduce the amount of copper in wiring. 


    And finally the one prediction I know that will be accurate: I will be dead by the time any of the above becomes the norm ? (Sad but relieved face). 


    And one final finally if zero carbon becomes the norm we will all be using shank's pony and there will be no electricity, welcome to Stone Age II. Unless of course someone reduces the rolling 20 year development timescale for fusion power ?
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    In a highly insulated house a fridge and freezer will be a major contributors to the space heating, could we see them plumbed in sharing a compressor that directs heat to where it is needed in the home, rather than adding to the excessive heat in the kitchen?


    Andy Betteridge
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    I think the biggest difference will be that all switches will be a combination of physical cotrol (as most are now) and electronic control needing little outward change to their appearance.

    Their operation and mode of control will be completely programmable to include customer preferences and hardware and software demands together with other options as required.

    If neccessary every switch in the world will have its own unique address.

    They will also combine all the aspects that the CU provides in the form of overload protection, RCD, arc etc.

    Eventually swirches will be akin in complexity to a common op amp (such as the IC741) that is able to do almost everything needed to accomplish its task whilst being nearly indestructable and very, very cheap.


    Alternatively or accompanying these switches, all loads will be wired directly to the mains supply and be able to be switched by conventional means or wireless control.

    Similar to the switches their electronics will be nearly indestructable and very, very cheap and combine all the aspects that the CU provides in the form of overload protection, RCD, arc etc.
  • 0

    Are building electricians generally stubborn people resistant to change or, to a certain degree, prone to luddism?



    No! The answer is quite simple. Proven methods work! Why make it more complicated than need be?

    Why for example, would you want to switch on your hallway light whilst on your return flight to the UK? Are you no longer physically able to flick a switch after opening your front door? Same with smart home lighting. At £48 per integral LED fitting, they are not cheap, nor do they have a product life cycle which will ensure that you will be able to get a direct replacement when it fails. And that is even before we get to the security issues which smart home networks pose. Products are rushed to market and rapidly superceded even before all of the 'bugs' are ironed out and all of the patches issued. That is where the major risks lie in future. As always, a fool is easily parted with his money and the early adopters pay the premium whilst being used a guinea pigs by the manufacturers.

    Sometimes 'smart' ain't so 'smart' just because 'you can'.
  • 0

    Chris Pearson:

    It is, however, difficult to see how the power of kitchen hobs could be reduced significantly.

     




     

    We have recently installed a couple of induction hobs that only required a 13A socket (they came complete with a plug ended flex and state a demand of 2.9kw.


    I'd imagine they're using fairly smart technology to modulate the usage dependent on the setting of the controls.


    Time will tell whether we get calls that 'that hob you installed is carp'
  • 0

    MHRestorations:




    Chris Pearson:

    It is, however, difficult to see how the power of kitchen hobs could be reduced significantly.




     

    We have recently installed a couple of induction hobs that only required a 13A socket (they came complete with a plug ended flex and state a demand of 2.9kw.


    I'd imagine they're using fairly smart technology to modulate the usage dependent on the setting of the controls.


    Time will tell whether we get calls that 'that hob you installed is carp'


    Daughter has an induction hob on a plug.


    By all means insulate an oven such that it can reach a high temperature with low power (but how does it maintain that temperature when a large "load" of food is put in it?) but if you are going to boil a kettle within a reasonable period, you just have to have a certain amount of power. 3 kW may be plenty.

  • 0

    Sparkingchip:

    Electrium describe a Wylex eight way consumer unit with surge, arc protection and double pole RCBOs as the ultimate consumer unit.


    Eight ways is more than enough for most homes.


     Andy Betteridge.




    With the release of single pole AFDD we can now get sixteen of them into an enclosure that up until now would only accept eight, so I might let you have a couple of extra circuits, but not a dedicated circuit for something that has built in battery backup.


    Andy Betteridge 

  • 0

    perspicacious:

    We've now got flat TVs in the middle of a wall rather than the obligatory double and co-ax in the corner to start with! . . .


    Regards


    BOD




     

    I've been trying to get TV sets out of corners since the 1970s, but not everyone is as progressive as us engineers.


    My mind turns back to picture books I read in the 50s and 60s, prophesying life in the next century. Houses would no longer have chimneys and the fireplace would be replaced by the TV and entertainment centre.


    It has not turned out quite like that, has it! There is still a mindset among many homeowners that the lounge must have a focal point, and that is the  fireplace - even if it is an artificial fire in the middle of a chimney-less wall. Large, flat-screen TVs in corners look awkward and out-of-place IMHO but residents make their own choices. Then there is stereo sound, broadcast on most TV services, but how many people have speakers arranged to take advantage of that? I regularly read the posts of Dr Digital in the Radio  Times and think to myself: "That's all very clever, but..."


    There is a new housing development going up near me. Most of the  houses are provided with - guess what - chimneys! Oh well, it is good to have something to attach your TV aerial to! 


    I have made representations to our council that it would be preferable for all new houses to be oriented to provide plenty of south-facing roof, to make maximum usage of possible future solar panels, given that economics preclude building these in at new. So far the interest of the council has been zilch.
  • 0
    One of my long standing customers was having a block of four flats built, the planners insisted that there had to be a chimney on the roof. I tried to persuade him to get a Fibreglass chimney just to sit on the top of the trusses.


    Instead he had the brick layers built one sitting on top of the gable wall, whilst the scaffolding was still up I said I hope they have filled the chimney pot up to the top with mortar and rounded it over to stop it filling up with water, he replied “I don’t think they have, but it will be alright”.


    A few weeks later there was a debate going on as to how you could get someone forty odd feet up in the air to try and drill some holes around the base of the chimney pot to let the water out or fill it up.


    The planners and designers do like to include completely functionless traditional features that in the long run just become a nuisance.


     Andy Betteridge
  • 0

    Sparkingchip:


    Network operators will stop providing customers with an earth terminal for new properties, they will all have to be TT with foundation earthing.

    Why? I'm vaguely aware that in some foreign countries TT is the norm.

    The standard maximum demand for domestic properties will be set at 45-amps with tariffs that enforce a penalty tariff if you exceed the agreed maximum demand for your home, so domestic main switches will have a built in trip to disconnect the installation if it looks like usage is going over the agreed level.

    This sounds very depressing as 45A is probably insufficient for all but the best insulated all electric homes of a reasonable size. Is a 45A current limit with a penalty tariff symbolic of the failure of privatising electricity, or just another way for the utility companies to rip-off customers in a similar way to mobile phone companies imposing penality tariffs for users who exceed their data allowance?

    The number of circuits installed in a domestic installation will be reduced from what people currently consider is required, back to a cooker circuit, a lighting circuit, a couple of socket circuits and a heat pump circuit, so around five circuits.

    Why? What is stopping somebody from installing a larger consumer unit in the future?

    With the reduced number of circuits it will become viable to install arc protection to all circuits along with double pole RCBOs.

    Arc protection may well become the norm for new or replacement consumer unit installations.

    The lighting circuit will be so well constructed with maintenance free LED lighting without any potential points of failure, so having more than one lighting circuit will be pointless, but there may be emergency lighting to most areas anyway in case of outages.

    The future of lighting remains to be seen. Will ceiling rose junction boxes with loop-in wiring still be the norm? Will light fittings still be designed for bulbs with large unwieldy bayonet cap and Edison screw fittings or will smaller fittings or in-built LED bulbs be the norm? Will most lighting circuits be backed up by a UPS?

    All homes with parking spaces will have EV charging points along with solar PV if external space is available and battery storage.

    EV charging points will probably become commonplace. The Solar Export Guarantee also needs to be at an attractive rate to encourage future PV installations.

    All homes will have the battery storage anyway to even out the demand.

    What will the cost of this actually be and the lifespan of the batteries? Would it be better to have battery storage at substations rather than individual houses?

    More homes will have renewable hot water systems, such as wet panels on their roofs.

    I read somewhere about how so few houses in London have solar PV or hot water and the explanation was that a higher than average proportion of houses in London are private rented. It's well known that private rented houses are a hard sell for solar or even conventional energy saving measures. Unless legislation is passed where private rented houses have to have solar, or private renting falls into significant decline, then solar will probably remain confined to comfortably well off homeowners.

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