Consumer Supply, Metering and Distribution
A domestic supply typically consists of a large cable connected to a service head, a sealed box containing the main supply fuse. This will typically have a value from 40–100 A. Separate live and neutral cables ('tails') go from here to an electricity meter, and often an earth conductor too. More tails proceed from the meter into the consumer side of the installation and into a consumer unit (distribution board), or in some cases to a Henley block (a splitter box used in low voltage electrical engineering) and thence to more than one distribution board.
The distribution board (aka fusebox) contains one or more main switches and an individual fuse or miniature circuit breaker (MCB) for each final circuit. Modern installations may use residual-current devices (RCDs) or residual current breakers with overcurrent protection (RCBOs). The RCDs are used for earth leakage protection, while RCBOs combine earth leakage protection with overcurrent protection. In a UK-style board, breaker positions are numbered top to bottom in the left-hand column, then top to bottom in the right column.
Read more about this topic: Electrical Wiring In The United Kingdom
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