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In article . com, (kevin) writes:

| I don't entirely understand your answer, though. I wasn't aware that
| there was a "neutral on the utility's side of the meter".

A typical split-phase residential service will have three wires from the
transformer to the meter: two hots and a neutral (or grounded conductor
if you prefer).

| And if there
| were, and I had a perfectly balanced load, then the neutral would have
| no current, right?

correct

| Which means... no losses, and hence no cost?

With a balanced load there would be no loss in the neutral and hence no
cost for power wasted in that neutral. There would still be cost for
the power you actually use, and that swamps the effects we are discussing
in most real cases.

| Obviously wrong... can you explain a little more?
|
| And moreover, there was a lot of BS in this thread about balancing the
| panel to begin with. To say that 240V devices are on both legs is
| irrelevant to the question of whether balancing a panel makes economic
| sense for the homeowner. Does a homeowner with a horribly imbalanced
| panel get charged more than the same homeowner if they just rearranged
| the breakers on the panel?

Yes, but the effect is very small. Again, the homeowner with a typical
split-phase service and 4-terminal (1.5 element) meter will pay for 150%
of the power lost in the neutral on the utility's side of the meter. A
perfectly balanced load would eliminate this loss. But unless you have
a long undersized neutral and a horribly unbalanced load (and possibly
even if you do) it (a) isn't worth worrying about and (b) is very hard
to fix.

Dan Lanciani
ddl@danlan.*com