I've seen a few posts lately about power requirements for running multiple 5500W elements. That got me thinking, about what the maximum volume that could be brewed using a standard residential 200A service.
Now I am going to limit my self to 100A brewery, that would be able to run 3 5500W elements simultaneously pulling ~75A. So assuming this would be ~16,500W.
Now assuming that we are only looking at boiling, A 60ºF rise in water temp in one hr for 100 gallons of water would require 16100W or (16.1kWh) so if you wanted to go from 170ºF to boil with 100 gallons it would take around 45min to 1hr. depending on kettle insulation and what not. I did the math assuming 1g of water requires 1.163X10^-6 kWh to raise its temp by 1ºC...and then converted the result to Gallons and ºF and then confirmed the results to this table...Wattage estimates
Thats not to practical, so I will say that ~60 gallons would be the max for a 240vac 100A system.I more have come up with this number because it seams that most people running one 5500W element in a kettle limit their batch size to 15-20gallons, so with three elements...the max would be around 60 gallons, Does this sound about right?
I guess if one wanted to build a 3bbl electric brewery, that would require ~200A at 240VAC with around 6 5500W elements. What about at 3phase 480VAC? I have neighbors who have had 3phase 480VAC dropped in to their houses to run welding equipment, so how feasible would this be to build a 480VAC brewery?
Now I am going to limit my self to 100A brewery, that would be able to run 3 5500W elements simultaneously pulling ~75A. So assuming this would be ~16,500W.
Now assuming that we are only looking at boiling, A 60ºF rise in water temp in one hr for 100 gallons of water would require 16100W or (16.1kWh) so if you wanted to go from 170ºF to boil with 100 gallons it would take around 45min to 1hr. depending on kettle insulation and what not. I did the math assuming 1g of water requires 1.163X10^-6 kWh to raise its temp by 1ºC...and then converted the result to Gallons and ºF and then confirmed the results to this table...Wattage estimates
Thats not to practical, so I will say that ~60 gallons would be the max for a 240vac 100A system.I more have come up with this number because it seams that most people running one 5500W element in a kettle limit their batch size to 15-20gallons, so with three elements...the max would be around 60 gallons, Does this sound about right?
I guess if one wanted to build a 3bbl electric brewery, that would require ~200A at 240VAC with around 6 5500W elements. What about at 3phase 480VAC? I have neighbors who have had 3phase 480VAC dropped in to their houses to run welding equipment, so how feasible would this be to build a 480VAC brewery?