Thanks for your info Helen… very interesting 
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Jeepers - do you have anything electrical other than the kettle and lights?
There’s no particular reason a Linky would make a fuse more likely to blow - but old fuses, especially ones which have been running hot anyway, are more fragile.
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Yes…my whole house runs on electric…I have no gas and no woodburner nor oil…
My hot water is electric…all my appliances are electric…I have electric heaters which I don’t use favouring paraffin heaters for instant warmth…
Interesting to note that both times I had a fuse blow the water supplied by my local syndicate was also experiencing problems…(the local syndicate supplies my kitchen and the hot water boiler in my loft…the corporate water board SAUR only supply the back of my house…they’ve also just installed a new meter…no warning just turned up on my driveway…)
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The last place I rented had a 6kW supply and was all electric, four bedrooms, two reception rooms, a large kitchen and a bathroom. Electric hot water, electric cooker, washing machine, electric kettle, microwave, electric heaters (plus woodburner), two TVs, vacuum cleaner. Never had a problem. That was pre-Linky but 6kW was enough.
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Not for that lot it wasn’t.
Unless you were careful not to turn more than two things on at once.
The trouble is that fuses are a “soft” protection device and the chances are that the rest of the wiring was up to more than 6kW, so you quite possibly went over 6kW without realising.
Remind me, was it me or you who lived there for two years?
You have a lovely approach to other people don’t you Dan ? Did you talk like that to all those lawyers and judges you ate with ?
I’ll assume the 
that you missed.
Note my comment.
A single oven is 3-5kW, a kettle typically 2-2.5kW, washing machine heater 1.5kW, hot water ballon (presumably on heures creuse?)3-5kW, microwave 650-900W.
Pop the oven on to warm up and boil the kettle for a nice cuppa and you are already marginal, switch almost anything else on and you will be over 6kW.
Fuses (assuming you had a fuse rather than a disjoncteur) are very slow to blow given “mild” (up to 50%) overload. Electromechanical devices are less forgiving but still don’t trip out at exactly their rated current and will sustain 10-25% over for quite a long time.
AIUI Linkies are quite strict.
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@anon14704272 [quote=“DustyM, post:46, topic:27910, full:true”]
Remind me, was it me or you who lived there for two years?
[/quote]
That comes over as a bit of a snarl and a cue to shut down discussion (or escalate it) - if you want to encourage positive communication, it is possible either to phrase things differently or to use emojis.
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I also have 6kW. I have a tiny house. After I moved in I had new electrical stuff installed and I asked the electrician if I needed to upgrade. He said On paper yes, but all meters have a certain amount of tolerance and some more than others, wait and see how tolérant yours is. Turned out mine isn’t fussy at all. But I can imagine a Linky being precise and allowing zero tolerance.
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Please tell me what I’m doing wrong. I posted to support Helen after Paul posted this
We lived quite comfortably with a 6kW supply. I have the factures to prove it stored somewhere if anyone doesn’t believe me. I know it’s possible without any hassle as I did it. I found Paul’s reply controversial not my reply. I lived there he cannot say it’s not possible. He did not ask about the house or the location or even exactly what equipment we used. We paid the electricity bills every two months, they ranged from about €60 for the summer months to almost exactly €400 in the winter. Six kW was sufficient and I really can’t thing what else we would have wanted to use. That was for a couple, perhaps the demands of a bigger family would have been greater.
MaryB, yes that’s exactly how I would have spoken to my friends. I really don’t get this emoji thing, why would a smiley face have made my post acceptable when the facts did not.
Well I think that however well intentioned you are, you are coming across as ‘snarky’ - there’s a huge difference between face to face communications and the written word.
So I am asking very nicely if, you could please stop, re-read what you have written and ask yourself , ‘Does this come over in a friendly, helpful manner?’ Or not?’ , before you press Reply.
Thanks.
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I had understood that’s an issue with a Linky, and people who were bumping the top of their supply are finding that it trips now. But I don’t understand why Helene’s fuses are blowing, rather than the meter just tripping?
Thing is Dan, Paul also has facts on his side. Unless you had low power appliances such as travel kettles etc, a combination of kettle/oven/heating/microwave etc will soon go over 6kW, it’s simple maths. I don’t think anyone is disputing that you managed on a 6kW supply, obviously you wouldn’t say you did if you didn’t. I think Paul’s “Jeepers!” was expressing surprise rather than disbelief, which is understandable if he hasn’t encountered this phenomenon before. I also get away with it so I wasn’t surprised that you did too, but if I hadn’t already been aware that I have a forgiving meter, I would have realised from what Paul said and started to appreciate my good luck. It’s what’s good about forums, we share experiences and knowledge and we all end up seeing a bit more of the big picture than if we never looked beyond our own experience.
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I took it that she has fuses rather than disjonteurs?
Im not stupid, I can do the math but my experience shows that it is perfectly possible to live a perfectly normal comfortable life with a 6kW supply. There was no cheap rate overnight electricity, the hot water balloon ran 24/7. We did not have a modern, power hungry oven and although our hobs ranged between 1kW and 2kW max I never used them at more than level 6/10 as there was no need. Theory has its place but my experience was based on fact and that too has value.
The funniest bit about today’s experiences was when I looked at SFR, there alongside the notifications telling me that I had several replies assassinating my character there was another notice telling me that I’d gained an appreciated badge. You could not make it up.
SFR do telephones SFN Does forums
Assassinating your character 
But I did not say that it was not possible.
I said that 6kW was not adequate for the list you gave and that you were probably going past 6kW at least some of the time without realising. In fact I specifically qualified my comment with the observation “Unless you were careful not to turn more than two things on at once”, the “two” was, perhaps not to be taken literally BTW - but the point is that I acknowledged right from the start that pattern of use might be the difference between it being OK and not really working.
I think this might be part of the reason that the Linky has a bad reputation for tripping when people thought their supply was adequate.
Very true - actually the disjoncteur or interrupteur has the tolerance. The meter itself will just be rated to something like 100A whatever the supply agreement.
Breakers have a specification, often summarised in a graph like this one
That relates how long the breaker takes to trip vs the overload current - the x axis scale is multiples of the nominal trip current, the blue band the current and the fact that there is a tolerance results in that being a band, not a line. The overall shape reflects the fcat that there are two trip mechanisms - a slow thermal one and a fast magnetic one.
Examine the area top left - up to about a 33% overload it is quite possible that the breaker will never trip, a 50% overload (9kW in your case) could be sustained for 10-20 minutes, quite long enough to boil a kettle even if you were drawing close to 6kW when you decided you wanted a cuppa.
Of course a lot of the things you listed will have thermostatically controlled heating elements which are not drawing current all the time, some (eg your water ballon) might be on a timed arrangement so mostly used when other things are not.
I am only saying the same as Anna’s electrician - 6kW is not really adequate on paper for your list (along with lighting etc, though modern LED lighting does not consume much power older incandescent lights can easily add up in the winter) - but depending on tolerances and pattern of use you might “get away with it”.
It’s not terribly controversial, though telling me I am wrong because you got away with it was a bit unfair.
Actually I was expressing sympathy
I have a 15kW single phase supply, I have a 5kW pompe chaleur, 5kW oven 7kW hob, dishwasher, washing machine (but not dryer), 750W pump in the cellar sump, fridge, microwave, kettle, heated towell rails - I also “get away with it” but am aware that I can’t turn everything on at once. The previous owner had a 9kW agreement, apparently the heating constantly tripped the breaker when it kicked in.
I’m struggling wih the concept of ‘experience based on fact’.
I think what you are doing is extrapolating a fact from a single experience, which can be dangerous.
If I fall off a roof and don’t hurt myself, I might take it as a fact that it’s safe to fall off that roof. Next time I might die.
What my experience actually proves, is that it is possible to fall off that roof without hurting yourself.
Experience is valuable as long as you accept that different experiences are also possible and are equally valid. Falls off rooves are different. Meters are different. Houses are different.
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Modern ovens are no more power hungry overall than older ones.
The amount of energy to maintain the oven cavity at a set temperature depends (broadly) on the size of the cavity, the contents and their heat capacity, the thermal resistance from the element to the cavity and the degree of insulation around the cavity - in fact modern ovens probably requite less energy given better insulation and better heat transfer (eg fan ovens, though the fan adds some consumption of power).
They might have a higher rated heater - that will reduce the time to reach set temperature but not overall energy consumption.