Electrical service - realistic max length?

[jbos333]

Hello. I was wondering if someone could tell me the realistic maximum distance for the following scenario: I currently have a building 300 feet from the road, with 4/0 underground wire from pole-meter and from meter-building. I am contemplating where to locate and build a home on this land, and I have an idea of where I would like it to go, but I don't know what my limitations are on the electrical service. The guy who installed the initial service to the utility building set it up with a 200 Amp panel with a "pass through" for future use, so the plan was to continue from this panel and feed a house, etc. further away. I like a particular site about another 500 ft. away from this building and I don't know if it's feasible.

[MountainDon]

Mark (Willy) will be able to answer this correctly. But I believe to give an accurate answer he may need some more information.

Is the 4/0 cable aluminum or copper?
Is the cable in conduit and what type, or direct burial?

Hopefully Mark will drop in tonight. 

[Willy]

First off you need to do a true load calulation on the service to find out your load in amps. If you take 180 amps at 200 ft your looking at around 250 MCM AL wire. If you allready went 300 ft and thinking of going another 500 ft that is 800 ft total just for the service cables not counting the drop with the romex in the home! 3% drop at the service entrance @ 800 ft your looking at only 35-40 amp load to stay in the 3% drop range. Even right now you are undersized some for a 300 ft run at 180 mps using 4/0 wire. Of course it would be real hard to draw 180 amps for a load on a house and 100 amps would be closer to being real using a lot of electricty. You would have to be welding, electric water heater, dryer all the lights on and maybe some electric heat to get it up there. They normaly only use a 25KW transformer rated at around 104 amps for a home. I have a 400 amp service at my home but I wanted all the panel spaces on 2- 200 amp services, 1- 100 amp service and 2-60 amp services. Now you add them up that is 620 amps of mains but I am fed with a 25 KW transformer also. I run  3 electric ovens using 10KW each plus my home and out buildings. I am also all electric and have well pump, 2 water heaters, 7 freezers, electric heat in the pump house one out building and several tank heaters in the 4-water troufs for the cows during the winter. Lucky the loads cycle and very seldom all run at the same time!! Mark

[jbos333]

Ok, looks like maybe I should consider a transformer. Is it something that could be added to my current setup? Approximate cost of the transformer?

[Willy]

Ok, looks like maybe I should consider a transformer. Is it something that could be added to my current setup? Approximate cost of the transformer?

Well you could leave the service where it is at and run another one cause you spent the money allready setting it up and go with 2 meters. You wire is not good for the transformer and a different type would have to be run. Cost all depends on what your power company want to stick you with. Some charge 20-40.00 a foot plus maybe trench charges and transformer cost and set up. Others figure you will be buying power from them and give you a break. Talk to the power company for a better cost. If your going to have buildings near the exsisting service I would leave it there and pay the extra cost for 2 meters and run high voltage to the home location also. Mark