I'm assuming you're talking about a 4 ton multi-zone unit (which is pretty large). Those call for a 50A MOCP, but in reality, they only draw like 20A while running, plus a couple for the indoor units' fans.
The breaker needs to be able to handle the peak, not the average. Just go Google Mitsubishi hyper heat - it clearly states 50 amps per condenser.
I’m not sure what’s difficult to understand about this.
> I’m not sure what’s difficult to understand about this.
Of course you may expect the casual reader to do the googling themselves. But if you want to make your arguments heard, it’s helpful to put a link to an authoritative source. Of course this is also true for anyone making the counter claim.
Of course the Google link has nothing to do with my claim anyway, since my original post supposed that 50 amps was required by breaker.
I wonder if having higher voltages in the US might be adopted for higher power devices. 110-120V is just too low, including for car charging.
I can’t imagine a permanent high energy install like a heater, shower, car charger, oven or heat pump would be 110v. If you plug in via a standard socket in europe you get about 3kW, which given european driving is probably fine overnight, but you’d want more than that in the US
Indeed.
My heat pump is 3phase 230v/16A one, that's 11kW peak power, the pump itself is 5kW, though with the rest being a resistive heater. Car charging is similar as well 3phase is quite standard nowadays.
My understanding is that the US power supply is pretty similar to the one in Europe when it comes to delivery, and industrial equipment runs 3phase, 240v - something you can find at a lot (most new) homes in Europe.
It's really just our basic receptacles that are 15A or 20A @ 120V. This is plenty for 99.9% of uses, with the exception of some kitchen appliances that produce heat (e.g. a plug-in kettle.) If you bought a unit that required higher voltages and was rated for use in the US, you could always have an electrician wire a 240V circuit with one of the standard 240V receptacle types.
My oven is on a dedicated 30A circuit, but the dryer, washer, dishwasher, microwave, kettle are all on the same 32A circuit with individual 13A plugs and don’t trip it.
There's a political, economic and cultural balance to be struck here, technology changes notwithstanding.
Moving on to electric retrofits, they are expensive but not crazy expensive. On the order of $2500-7500 per SFH to wire 220/30-50 amp circuits to the right places (HVAC, stove, water heater, clothes dryer, EV charger) and maybe upgrade the main panel - a far cry from redoing the entire wiring. It’s not an insane proposition to think we could retrofit all existing housing stock in a 15 year period if we wanted to take it seriously. We are going to need more electricians though.
Do you know what is actually really expensive? Billions or trillions of dollars in climate disaster losses and mitigation which we are seeing ramp up very quickly. If we continue burning fossil fuels even remotely like we are now, in 20 years time the losses we say today will look like peanuts in comparison.
Buildings make up a very significant amount of the CO2e emissions (depending on the location, often tied #1 with transportation) so doing nothing here is not really an option.
If what you were saying were true then economic forces would already have led to dominance of full electric without the need for government mandates to begin with.
Market forces will lead us down this path eventually but they are not instantaneous, and we don’t have much time to wait. Policy can help 1- accelerate, 2- bootstrap emerging markets (eg creating demand for more induction stoves turns that market from a niche to mainstream, with more competition, more choice, and reduced cost, all of which will serve to boost demand) and 3- finance infrastructure investments that may be beyond reach for many.
On gas infrastructure, yes it is in place but it still requires significant ongoing maintenance costs which would be eliminated if it was shut down.