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Comment by lazide | Hacker News Reader

screams in fire marshall

This is like a guerrilla solar recipe from the anarchist’s cookbook.

The author doesn’t explicitly dissuade people from plugging in another multipoint/powerstrip/plugstrip into the end of the extension cable you’ve run into the other room. So I will. Don’t do that. There are plenty of low gauge, cheap extension cables out there which will degrade fast in this setup, and may cause a fire.

Also, if your landlord is okay with seeing this setup they probably don’t have insurance they’re worrying about, and are simply making sure you’re not actively destroying the property (rather than potentially destroying it with the fire hazard).

I often downvote posts like this, on the grounds that excessive safety nannyism doesn't belong on a site called Hacker News... but having seen what they call a "2500W power distribution strip," yeah... have an upvote or three.

I can't find a mention for the voltage, but if it's 240V, that seems like about 10A, which is standard for these strips, no?

All the prices are in USD, and the outlets are US standard, so this is likely 120V. So 20 Amps, not 10.

It's 120V. Pushing 20A continuous through that kind of wiring is less than ideal.

First of all, let's assume less than ideal conditions so base our calculations on 115V. 2,500 watts is going to be 21.7 amps; assuming a continuous load (which is pretty reasonable for a whole house) is going to need a breaker and wiring that's rated for 125% of that, or 27.2A.

That means the supply needs to be #10 wiring and should be fitted with a 30A breaker at the disconnect. A temporary power tap is not a suitable disconnect. And I highly doubt it's got 10 gauge wiring.

Ah yeah, at 120V that is definitely not going to cut it.

Assuming the linked products are the products in the picture, the strip is a product from Southwire that is claimed to be rated for 20 amps / 2500W and southwire is an established and known brand. It is listed as being for “temporary” installations and I’m not sure I’d want to run that load through it all the time, but it’s probably not that bad.

Dont fuck with electricity. I think the intuitions people have are based on home installations with RCDs, fuses and earthing and proper cabling before it gets to that socket. You then plug in a distribution to draw 100w for your devices and maybe the occasional 2kw for the vacuum cleaner for 5 minutes if too lazy to use another socket. Yoy not running full house load through it all day.

Eh, what about importing at 15Kw, exporting at 5 and charging batteries at 500A@52V?

> There are plenty of low gauge, cheap extension cables out there which will degrade fast in this setup, and may cause a fire.

But I used the highest gauge I could find! I looked hard, but I couldn't find any with more than 16 ;p

Good news! I looked on Amazon and I found one that goes all the way up to 18! It also says ‘fully copper coated’ so you know it’s good. (/s, please never do this)

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