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A unit owner in our condo building wants to increase their electrical amperage. We have some excess amperage available, but not so much that all apartments would be able to do so in the future. We are considering charging the owner a fee in addition to the cost of construction, but are unsure how much to charge. I would appreciate hearing how other buildings handle this kind of situation.
Join the Conversation Comments (1)Thank you, JG. You provided some helpful information. I would still like to hear from anyone with experience of charging a fee.
I agree with JG that you need to look at the overall bldg needs and possibly need to bring in more service overall. If you are borderline it might make more sense to do a building-wide upgrade so you can control quality, construction and compliance.
Remember that it also means possibly increasing the size of (all) the meters which replacement not only costs a lot to do, but the billed usage cost of electricity seems to go up as well, in terms of volume of usage, not the rate charge itself. At it's most basic, installing new breaker boxes with enough spare room for unknown future needs, bringing in separate AC lines to each apartment, and each room using AC units, on dedicated lines to each room is important. All bathrooms and kitchens need to have GFI outlets and sockets, You might want to install USB sockets as well. You can't plug computers and digital equipment into lines that have motors and heating units on them such as hairdryers, vacuum cleaners etc. So there is a need for separate lines even if the usage doesn't top 80 AMP service, the spread and distribution might cause you need to distribute 100 amps or 120 amps throughout each apartment.
Are you billing usage as part of maintenance or is everyone individually metered and paying Con-Ed directly? Is your building a prewar building with the old asbestos wrapped wiring that is all friable by now, or newer bx cabled? Are the apartments properly grounded? Are they currently 2-wire or 3-wire runs?
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I would look at the current available amperage for the units to see if it's reasonable first. With continual improvements in technology, most items are using less electricity today - energy star appliances all use less than the old ones. Flat panel TV's use 10 watts instead of 350 watts for the crt's. CFL (spiral fluorescent) bulbs use 80% less power. In my building, we have single phase 80 amp service available in each unit, which can provide 220 v if needed. No one in our 30 years has needed to upgrade that. If the service currently available is borderline, maybe you need to consider upgrading the building service, or at least getting a cost estimate for it. How many units are there, how much excess capacity do you have? You could consider charging some % of the estimated upgrade cost and put it into a reserve for upgrade when needed. What is the likelihood others will want to upgrade as well?
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