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Ah yes, the good old "let's eat into the safety margins". This is why our motorways no longer have hard shoulders. OK, so cars break down less now. What justification is there for eating into electrical margins? The wiring in people's houses isn't getting any younger. And we still use the ridiculous ring system even in new builds in 2026.


Estimates suggest they could save U.S. consumers billions of dollars a year in electricity costs, while potentially offsetting thousands of megawatts of demand (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09601...)

Plus it increases equity because this primarily opens up solar for those in rented accommodation and apartments/flats who otherwise couldn't access it. Personally that feels well worth pursuing if it's deemed safe.


Great, but electricity is really quite dangerous and eating into the safety margins seems very short sighted. I've seen all kinds of horrors in home wiring. This might seem fine in a world where all wiring is completely up to standard, but in the real world it's done by busy electricians or clueless DIYers. The safety margins are there because in a real installation something will probably be not quite right. It's very common to find wires buried in insulation (the insulation installers don't know or care about electricity), wrong size breakers in use, old/worn out breakers/RCDs, loose connections, the list goes on...




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