Roland Perry wrote:
In message -septem
ber.org, at 21:19:44 on Sat, 4 Apr 2015, Recliner remarked:

Loads of PCs, monitors, printers, photocopiers etc are switched on.

In offices, which should have higher power supplies.

The problem is that the feed to the offices won't have originally added
up to so much, and the cabling in the street now risks being
underspecified. And people keep building new stuff. The new developments
along the south bank of the Thames between London Bridge and Tower Bridge
15 years ago involved much digging up of the road (including the one
under LB Station) to install a new power feed.

I'd expect that to be needed regularly as urban areas are redeveloped.
London has been getting large new buildings (both residential and
commercial) in many areas that are bound to need new utilities (not just
power suppliers). For example, Docklands, Nine Elms, the Kings Cross
railway lands, the Stratford Olympic area and the South Bank area you
mentioned must all have needed substantial new power, water, gas, phone and
sewerage capacity.

Surely that load is less than the electric heating load that used to be
common before most people switched to gas?

When we first moved into a certain office block in Brentwood, despite
being 60's build, there were only two ring mains for each 4,000 sqft
floor - enough to run a few electric typewriters perhaps. Having plugged
in numerous PCs and similar stuff, we were initially a bit surprised that
the breakers went if someone also turned on an electric kettle.

I'd have expected Amstrad to find a particularly cheap and nasty block!

It was quite a nice block (unlike the Tottenham warehouse they moved
from), and the *quality* of the electrical work was top-notch. There just
wasn't *enough* of it.

Maybe that's why it was cheap?