It’s Your Money > Building in the Philippines
electricity in the Philippines
spin:
Good read, thanks to all who contributed to this topic.
Peter:
Rudy,
Here in the Bataan, which may not be wired the same as Davao, NAPOLCOR use a "phantom" earth (ground) system.
This essentially means they earth/ground the transformers at the electricity distribution sub-station and deliver electricity via a 2 wire - live and neutral - system. The consumers if they so want, and the majority do not, can then install a 3 wire system in their residences.
An earthing rod can be connected between the earth bus in the incoming breaker box and outside. This then makes a 'phantom' connection through the ground to the earth side of the sub-station transformers. Just make sure you have a proper earth rod and it is is connected by heavy duty cable or preferably an earthing strip and is buried in good conductive earth.
Then a 3 wire live/neutral/earth system may be installed in the house.
This, of course means that the 'normal' 2 pin Filipino wall sockets are of no use.
Ace Hardware, Robinsons Handyman, and others, have double, multiway wall sockets available, along with the matching pattresses, which have 3 terminals to accept the L/N/E wires from the fused breaker outlets.
We installed a 3 way sytem when we built the extension to the wife's old house. At that time 2003, I had to "balakbayan box" all the necesssary kit in.
I then rewired the old part to the same standard.
Two things stood out.
One, and this is very important you should only have one earthing rod in your property. There are exceptions, aren't there always, but 99% of installations should only have one, located as close as possible to your incoming circuit breaker box.
If you have more than one, eddy currents WILL occur between them and that is definitely injurious to your health.
Secondly. The average Filipino 'sparky' does not understand what a "Ring" main is (unless they have worked abroad, or been exposed to overseas practises) and also have no idea that the live/neutral wires should be connected to their respective marked terminals, not any-old-how as the standard 2 black wires they are acustomed to.
As part of our planning I also shipped in 800 metres each of yellow/green, red and black (KISS at work) wire, as I didn't want any confusion by using standard Filipino, 2 black wires that seems to be the norm.
Even so, it was lucky (or maybe proper planning LOL!) that I brought with us a mains system tester. When the 'sparkies' had finished wiring in the extension, I went around and checked every outlet (21 of them, plus two 3 wire water heaters) and corrected about 50% which had crossovers from live (red) to earth (yellow/green) to neutral (black) and any combination thereof.
This was despite sitting with the foreman(?), explaining what each wire was, demonstrating by doing the first cable run and connections and producing a drawing of what colour goes where.
It was worth it in the end and we sleep safely at night.
Hope this helps.
Stay safe all.
Peter
Gray Wolf:
Thank you Peter :)
David690:
--- Quote from: Peter on December 22, 2020, 04:27:20 PM ---Rudy,
Here in the Bataan, which may not be wired the same as Davao, NAPOLCOR use a "phantom" earth (ground) system.
This essentially means they earth/ground the transformers at the electricity distribution sub-station and deliver electricity via a 2 wire - live and neutral - system. The consumers if they so want, and the majority do not, can then install a 3 wire system in their residences.
An earthing rod can be connected between the earth bus in the incoming breaker box and outside. This then makes a 'phantom' connection through the ground to the earth side of the sub-station transformers. Just make sure you have a proper earth rod and it is is connected by heavy duty cable or preferably an earthing strip and is buried in good conductive earth.
Then a 3 wire live/neutral/earth system may be installed in the house.
This, of course means that the 'normal' 2 pin Filipino wall sockets are of no use.
Ace Hardware, Robinsons Handyman, and others, have double, multiway wall sockets available, along with the matching pattresses, which have 3 terminals to accept the L/N/E wires from the fused breaker outlets.
We installed a 3 way sytem when we built the extension to the wife's old house. At that time 2003, I had to "balakbayan box" all the necesssary kit in.
I then rewired the old part to the same standard.
Two things stood out.
One, and this is very important you should only have one earthing rod in your property. There are exceptions, aren't there always, but 99% of installations should only have one, located as close as possible to your incoming circuit breaker box.
If you have more than one, eddy currents WILL occur between them and that is definitely injurious to your health.
Secondly. The average Filipino 'sparky' does not understand what a "Ring" main is (unless they have worked abroad, or been exposed to overseas practises) and also have no idea that the live/neutral wires should be connected to their respective marked terminals, not any-old-how as the standard 2 black wires they are acustomed to.
As part of our planning I also shipped in 800 metres each of yellow/green, red and black (KISS at work) wire, as I didn't want any confusion by using standard Filipino, 2 black wires that seems to be the norm.
Even so, it was lucky (or maybe proper planning LOL!) that I brought with us a mains system tester. When the 'sparkies' had finished wiring in the extension, I went around and checked every outlet (21 of them, plus two 3 wire water heaters) and corrected about 50% which had crossovers from live (red) to earth (yellow/green) to neutral (black) and any combination thereof.
This was despite sitting with the foreman(?), explaining what each wire was, demonstrating by doing the first cable run and connections and producing a drawing of what colour goes where.
It was worth it in the end and we sleep safely at night.
Hope this helps.
Stay safe all.
Peter
--- End quote ---
This is not the case in Davao, at least not with our supply from Davao Light.
The transformer is grounded at the pole, and the supply is via 2 insulated cables. These are 110v each in opposite phase forming 220v between them.
Cheers,
Peter:
David.
As I said < .... in the Bataan, which may not be wired the same as Davao,.... >
Our mains incoming is 220v 60Hz, delivered on one "live" insulated cable, with a non-insulated "neutral", which doubles up as the catenary.
Makes me tremble each time I see it, but it works. LOL!
Merry Christmas to one and all.
Stay safe.
Peter
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