Only one EV charger at home?!

It depends what you mean by 'big margin'. A High Rupture Capacity fuse (which this will be) is guaranteed to fail within four hours at 1.5 times the rated current. It will blow in a shorter time under larger overloads.

Fuses are very imprecise devices, circuit breakers not much better..

My charger has no current sensing. It can operate co-operatively, but only if your other charger(s) are the same make and model.

The trouble is that we are getting more and more away from simply plug and charge, needing to use multiple apps for car, charger and electricity provider, possibly with 3rd party apps and relying upon them all working together smoothly.

I already find it a minor irritation that, on getting home, I have to get out of the car, without locking it (or the charge flap will also be locked), which leaves lights, radio and dash on; plug in; then lock the car; then use the charger app to set charging and the car's own app if I want to monitor charge state. That's before we introduce a 3rd app to allow the car to charge at lower demand times, rather than a fixed period.

I put a new CU in when I moved in in 1993. The next time the meter reader came, he noted the upgrade and booked to have the main fuse upgraded from 60A to 100A. I didn't have to request anything or pay anything.

Why didn't you replace the fuse yourself? They're only £7.

Just look at the incoming cable width. If it can take 100A, put in a 100A fuse.

There's no such thing as a contract limiting current, I've never been told such bollocks by an electric company. You pay for what you use. That can be up to what the cable will physically supply. The transformer feeding you feeds 100 houses, so you're not going to kill it.

I think an electrician will only put one without current sensing if your installation meets the usual diversity calculation. eg if the charger is

32A it's assumed to be running continuously at that current. That leaves 68A for the rest of the installation on a 100A feed. It's also possible to configure the charger at installation time to only supply eg 25A if that's all remaining after diversity.

Agreed, 'apps' are a car crash of interoperability. They all want to corral you into their little walled garden where you can't do very much. Thankfully there are also APIs that allow platforms to communicate, although remains to be seen how long these stay working.

Personally I wouldn't buy anything without local control. But then I'm resigned to running a Home Assistant instance to glue it all together.

Theo

Not necessary. The incoming cable will take 100A continuously. How do you think storage radiators manage to work? My parents had them put in, 3x15A heaters, 4x7.5A heaters = 75A, plus 15A immersion, all on at once for most of the night = 90A. Standard 100A feed, just like everyone else.

It cannot sense it unless it's talking to a smart meter which has been told the limit.

It could see a voltage drop, but the voltage isn't constant anyway.

No it isn't. They'll be happy to see more power being bought and will upgrade the transformer, just as they would if more housing was built.

We used to have something called Economy 7, cheaper all night, not sure why they did away with it.

Probably happens naturally, not everyone plugs it in at the same time. Anyway the car (or ther driver) can say they want to charge it slower to save wear on the battery. There's no point in you using the full charger speed if you have all night and are only topping it up. Batteries love slower charges.

Utter f****ng unbelievable bullshit. It's not the case 1000s of people in one town all get a charger simultaneously the same day. It's a gradual change, which they can see with their metering at the substations.

Bad design of car. If you lock the car, it shouldn't lock the charge flap at all (you can't steal power out of it like syphoning petrol), and if it wants to lock it, it can give you 5 minutes to plug it in. If you don't use the app, it should default to some sensible setting (or one you gave it) and charge at a certain rate. The car shouldn't require such mollycoddling.

Utter stupidity they didn't fit a 100A fuse in the first place. Maybe because old fuseboxes didn't end to be 100A?

Wrong. They'll notice the gradual increase and upgrade whatever needs to be upgraded. Here for example a substation feeds three cables (one for each phase) along the pavement for 100 houses. If everyone started using so much the cables weren't enough, easy enough to stick another substation the other end of the street, and cut the cables in the middle. There you go, half load.

If you work on your fusebox, it's nice to cut the power. The only way to do that is pull the main fuse. So you put a new tag on it to stop them being nosy.

I don't understand how you can live with 10A. Are you in a tent? No dishwasher, washing machine, kettle, microwave, computer, lights, etc?

Air conditioning? Surely you use one or the other?

I've never seen them do that, which was unfortunate for my neighbour where I used to live. An old house with an overhead feed. It came loose where it entered the eaves and shorted. Nothing to stop 1000A going through it and setting fire to the roof. Fucked the transformer over the road too.

I don't have one. No need, the main one by the meter is the main limiter. I have a fusebox with a row of 6 fuses in it.

What do you mean contracting? Installing it in ouyr property and getting them to change all the wiring? Or paying a neighbour?

Microwave? Or are you still using flames to heat?

Can't be good for your eyes reading in the dark.

I'm currently sat in a 7m by 3.5m room. It's lit by 200W (input power) of LEDs. Back in the days of those horrid yellowy filament lamps, I had 720W.

I hate lamps, they're point sources and cause shadows. I always use strip lights. The LED ones are really light, you just screw two clips into the ceiling, even if it's just plasterboard, and clip them up. They will plug into each other, so you only need to wire up one.

My neighbour where I used to live had an old house in a village of 1000 people where most houses were newer, where everyone else had running water. He refused to have it installed, as he had a well and a pump. Free water.

Actually I do know what's inside my old meter, as I got to keep it when the smart meter replaced it. The current sensor was just measuring voltage across a shunt. Nothing would have prevented that taking a huge current.

I doubt they'd put an overload cutout inside a meter, as there's the main fuse protecting it anyway. More hassle for them to open up the meter and reset it, than just replace the master fuse.

I remember the seals at my parents's house when I was a kid (the seals would have been fitted about 1965). Just a crimped lump of lead.

I used to stick magnets on the meter to see if it would slow down, it didn't.

There's no "diversity calculation", it's a guess. Everyone's usage is different, best to ask the homeowner. I'd have no problem with 2 x 29A chargers (it's not 32A, not sure where you dreamed up that figure). That would use 58A, leaving me 42A, plentyfull.

Only electric cars I've seen, you just use the dashboard. Why involve a phone?

Only home assistant I've got is a Google Home speaker. I just ask it questions, quicker than loading up a browser and searching for it. I can even ask it while I'm typing this to do a calculation I know I'm going to need the answer for in a minute. But I see no point in centralised home automation. Some of my lights are on timers, some are manual, some are motion sensors. But they're self contained. They really don't need to communicate with my fridge.

Once again you show your ignorance. There are explicit rules to calculate diversity. I recommend you look them up before looking more stupid.