[BC] 3 phase to single phase conversion - a sneaky, perhaps unethical solution

[lists at loudandclean.com]

> Suppose we could somehow find out how much a customer's load had to  
> be, where the engineers at the power company would, as a matter of  
> normal practice, specify all three phases?

     At the "ready to be lit off" Newton MA triplex site (1600-1330-1200),
we specified the load we had calculated for all three stations plus HVAC
and ancillary loads.  I forget the exact number, but it was several
hundred KVA.

     The power company took several months to agree to meet us for a
site visit.  When they got there, they asked, "So where do you want
to put this 100 KVA transformer?"  When we raised our eyebrows and
told'em we required several times that capacity, they said, "Oh, well,
you won't ever have all that stuff on at once, we do a statistical
analysis and de-rate the service for what we think you'll actually use."

     Mystifying!  It took us several more months to actually get them to
design the right service for the facility.  One of the many reasons the
buildout took so long.

Grady